Union Cemetery

At least 30 Union soldiers were killed during the Battle of Parker's Crossroads, and those killed in action were buried here shortly afterward under War Department orders issued in April 1862 directing commanding generals to set aside ground near battlefields for the dead, mark graves with numbered headboards and, where practicable, names, and keep registers that were ultimately sent to the quartermaster general's office in Washington, D.C. After the war ended, a concerted effort began to identify the resting places of Union dead and remove them to national cemeteries, and in July 1867 the bodies buried here were exhumed and reinterred at the National Cemetery in Corinth, Mississippi. The men probably buried in this cemetery were from the 122nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 50th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, 39th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and 7th Wisconsin, 7th Battery Light Artillery. An archaeological investigation in November 1993 verified that this was the location where Union casualties were buried after the battle, and two more excavations in 1994 conclusively demonstrated that this was the original Union cemetery; differences in soil color and texture revealed a number of burial locations, and the remains of one individual, mistakenly left behind when the others were relocated, were uncovered during the excavations.

Parker's Crossroads, Tennessee · United States