Thomas's Resting Place

Colonel William Holland Thomas, buried in Greenhill Cemetery, began trading with the Cherokee at sixteen and became the first and only white man to serve as a Cherokee chief, as well as an influential figure in antebellum western North Carolina. He represented the Cherokee in the state capital and in Washington, D.C., helping establish the Qualla Boundary for the Eastern Band of Cherokee. On September 27, 1862, he organized Thomas’s Legion of Cherokee Indians and Mountaineers in Knoxville, Tennessee, for the Confederacy. Locally called the Highland Rangers, the unit eventually recruited more than 2,000 officers and men, including two companies of 400 Cherokee, fought in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, and largely prevented the Federal occupation of western North Carolina. Part of the Legion took part in the final engagement of the war in North Carolina at Waynesville on May 6-7, and Thomas surrendered the Legion to Union Colonel William C. Bartlett on May 9. Officers in the Legion from this area included Colonel William Stringfield, Colonel James Robert Love II, Lieutenant Colonel William C. Walker, and Captain John T. Levi, and Stringfield is also buried in Greenhill Cemetery. Captain Alden Howell, a Haywood County native buried in Greenhill Cemetery, enlisted in 1861 in the 16th North Carolina Infantry, Company B, served four years, rose to captain, and after the war became a prominent Waynesville banker and landowner. At his death on March 19, 1947, there were 110 living Confederate veterans, but he was the last remaining Confederate officer.

Waynesville, North Carolina · United States