In September 1862, following the Civil War battles at South Mountain and Sharpsburg, wounded soldiers poured into Shepherdstown until every building and the surrounding countryside were filled with disabled and suffering men. Mary Bedinger Mitchell, who was 12 years old and living just outside town at Poplar Grove, remembered that the wounded continued to arrive until there was no more room. Although many later moved on, some remained in Shepherdstown as their final resting place. In 1867, the Southern Soldiers Memorial Association of Shepherdstown was founded to collect into a burial ground the bodies of Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War, care for their graves, and perpetuate the memory of their deeds. In 1868, led by Joseph McMurran, James Madison Hendricks, William L. Arthur, John Will Taylor, and John William Benjamin Frazier, the group bought land from Jacob Line beside the Methodist Cemetery for men killed or mortally wounded during the Maryland Campaign. Their graves were first marked with wooden headstones. The Confederate Cemetery was formally dedicated on Saturday, June 5, 1869, transferred to the care of Elmwood by 1871, and in 1884 its wooden markers were replaced with marble headstones. Today, among 171 standing headstones, 112 known burials are identified by state: Georgia 22, Virginia 20, North Carolina 19, South Carolina 12, Louisiana 6, Mississippi 6, Alabama 4, Florida 3, and Texas 3. Fifteen men are named without a state, and 59 of those buried there are unknown.
