As fighting intensified in central Georgia during the summer of 1864, wagons evacuated sick and wounded Confederate soldiers from Macon’s overcrowded Ocmulgee Hospital, and caravans traveling down the Old Savannah Road stopped at this cemetery to bury soldiers who died en route to hospitals farther south. In January 1865, Confederate Brig. Gen. Samuel W. Ferguson, headquartered at Mt. Vernon, and more than 1000 cavalrymen from Alabama and Miss. conducted patrols and skirmishes with casualties in this area, and none of these unknown dead are believed to have been local men. Ferguson’s brigade later served as personal escort to Jefferson Davis during his retreat from Virginia to Georgia. In April 1865, the Fourth Michigan Cavalry patrolled this area north of the Altamaha River but failed to capture members of the Confederate Cabinet who crossed the river and escaped to Florida and Cuba. After the war, the United Confederate Veterans marked these unknown dead with metal UCV crosses, though many have been lost, and the exact number and identities of those buried here remain known only to God.