Established during the Civil War on about four and one-half acres within Dalton's original ten-acre cemetery, the burial ground now known as part of West Hill contains the graves of more than four hundred Confederate soldiers and four Federal soldiers, many of whom died in Dalton's military hospitals. Dalton's location on the Western and Atlantic Railroad made it a destination for sick and wounded Confederate soldiers brought from battlefields after the 1862 and 1863 battles of Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga. Among the first soldiers to die there were Corporal John G. Reynolds of Company E, 20th Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, on April 20, 1862, and Corporal John A. McBryde of Company H, 23rd Alabama Volunteer Infantry Regiment, on June 17, 1862. The Oliver Hospital, opened in July 1862, was Dalton's first Confederate hospital, and nine more hospitals opened during 1863 and early 1864 before all closed or moved farther south prior to Union Major General William T. Sherman's occupation of Dalton on May 13, 1864. Smallpox and other diseases also claimed many hospitalized men. The cemetery is also the final resting place of Confederate Brigadier General Bryan M. Thomas, a Milledgeville native, West Point graduate, veteran of many Western Theater battles, and later superintendent of Dalton's public schools. Memorial observances began there on April 26, 1866, led by the ladies of Dalton, and were continued by veterans, their sons, the Bryan M. Thomas Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and later other local organizations. Granite grave markers erected in 1900 replaced the original wooden headboards, the surrounding wrought iron fence was acquired by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Soldiers Memorial Statue, first erected in 1892, was moved there in 1976.

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton