"The Zollie Tree"

In the years after the Battle of Mill Springs, the white oak under which General Felix Zollicoffer's body had been placed became known as the Zollie Tree, a local gathering spot beside a mass grave holding the slain general and his men, who were long left without remembrance or honor. In 1902, ten-year-old Dorotha Burton, seeing Union soldiers in the National Cemetery honored on Memorial Day with lavish decorations and grand ceremonies while the Confederate dead near the Zollie Tree were nearly forgotten, decorated the tree with a flower-entwined evergreen wreath and placed flowers on the mass grave for General Zollicoffer and his men. She continued this tribute until 1947, when arthritis disabled her, and her family has continued the Memorial Day tradition by decorating the new Zollie Tree. A severe storm destroyed the original tree on June 9, 1995; it had been fifteen feet in circumference, eighty to ninety feet tall, and between two hundred and two hundred fifty years old. The white oak growing there now is a seedling of the original, planted on Memorial Day 1996 so future generations could continue the tradition and enjoy the Zollie Tree's shade.

Kentucky · United States