In 1889, nearly 25 years after the Civil War ended, Missouri Confederate veterans meeting in Higginsville for their annual reunion recognized the need for a refuge for less fortunate comrades and founded the Confederate Home Association. Within a year, enough money had been raised to buy 365 acres of farmland north of Higginsville, and Southern patriotic women’s groups, especially the Daughters of the Confederacy, sought funds to build and furnish dwellings there. In April 1891, Julius Bamberg became the first veteran admitted to the Confederate Soldiers Home of Missouri, the first of more than 1,600 veterans and their wives, children, and widows who found shelter there over the next 59 years. Needy and incapacitated former soldiers and sailors from across the South lived at the home after proving their service, financial need, and Missouri residency; they had served in every theater of war and every major battle, from Fort Sumter to Appomattox, and came from the border states and all but one Confederate state. Unlike other Southern veterans’ institutions, Missouri’s home admitted women and children from the beginning. By the mid-1890s, inadequate funding and a nationwide depression brought a serious financial crisis, leading the state to assume financial control in 1897 while a board of Confederate veterans continued to oversee operations. As the veteran population aged, the home grew into a largely self-sustaining community with 30 buildings, a farm and dairy, memorial park, electricity, and steam heat, annually caring for more than 380 veterans and their families at its peak. The comrades were well known in the state and received visits from political figures including future president Harry S Truman and William Jennings Bryan, while Missouri chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy regularly held celebrations, dances, memorial services, and other events for them. On May 8, 1950, Johnny Graves, the last surviving Missouri Confederate soldier, died there at age 108 and was buried beside 800 others in the cemetery; the four remaining widows were transferred to a nursing home, and the Confederate Soldiers Home of Missouri officially closed. Soon afterward, much of the property was taken over by another state agency and many deteriorated buildings were demolished, but the Missouri State Park Board assumed management of the remaining land, including the 90-acre Confederate Memorial Park, cemetery, and one cottage. Today, the 135-acre Confederate Memorial State Historic Site honors more than 40,000 Missouri soldiers who fought for the Southern cause, and includes a century-old chapel and cottage, a farmhouse, a 1920s-era hospital building, lakes, lawns, the historic cemetery, and a restored chapel listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
