Confederate soldiers who gave their lives on June 24, 1864, during the Battle of Lafayette are buried here, including 15 who share a common grave at this site. Cyrus Edwards, who fought on the Union side, recalled in a letter dated April 25, 1932, that after the fight he headed a party clearing the street, picking up the dead and laying them in rows beside the street while the wounded were placed in shaded spots and then moved into buildings; prisoners who were not wounded were sent at once to Chattanooga, and the wounded followed as soon as possible. He also remembered that several old men from the country obtained permission to remove a few recognized dead for burial among friends, and that he next saw the remaining bodies as the last of them were being placed in the burial ditch. Judge W. M. Henry, writing in the Walker County Messenger, remembered that the Presbyterian church, then enclosed by a front yard fence, had been turned into a field hospital, and that along three sides of the churchyard fence lay the Confederate dead, each with his head to the fence and his face covered, numbering a few more than 20 as he remembered it, while he did not know where the Federal dead were laid. Miss Orpha Center recounted that Union soldiers passed her home carrying dead Confederate soldiers to the cemetery for burial, playing a funeral dirge and acting respectfully and solemnly, and that her brother Doc, then a boy, followed them and saw a large grave where 15 were buried together. Known Confederate soldiers killed at the Battle of Lafayette Square included men from the 16th Confederate Cavalry, 12th Mississippi, 8th Alabama Cavalry, Lewis' Battalion Alabama Cavalry, 12th Tennessee Cavalry, and 14th Tennessee Cavalry; none were listed from the 15th Tennessee Cavalry.

Photo: Darren Jefferson Clay

Photo: Darren Jefferson Clay