A Visit to Marietta's Confederate Cemetery Part 1

I accompanied my wife over to Atlanta this past weekend and while she was in her book conference, I went looking for some Confederate points of interest.  Happened upon the Marietta Confederate Cemetery.  An awesome place to spend a couple hours even freezing with a shivering wind chill on a January winter morning.  The Marietta City Cemetery and Confederate Cemetery are situated between Powders Springs St and Atlanta St overlooking old downtown Marietta from a bluff.  The cemetery displays flags for each state of the Confederacy as well as states which provided soldiers for the Cause including Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri as each state has Confederate dead buried in the cemetery.  

Confederate and State Flags at the Marietta Confederate Cemetery

The granite monuments at the entrance to the cemetery listed all the Confederate soldiers buried there by state.  Tennessee had four columns of names followed by Alabama with three and Georgia with three shorter columns.  South Carolina had two columns of names and Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas each had a column of names, 3000 in total.  The monument also had a map of the battles leading to the siege of Atlanta including Rocky Face, Resaca, Pickett's Mill, Kennesaw Mountain and Marietta where these Confederate soldiers fell.  The granite monument between these two long walls has a pair of bronze boots atop it dedicated to the Confederate unknown soldier whose remains were reinterred here in April of 1989 from the site of the Battle of Cheatham Hill.  

Granite Monuments and the Flags at Marietta Confederate Cemetery

The cemetery was established in 1863 and the first grave was that of Dr. William H. Miller, surgeon.  On December 28th William Bosley deeded 2 acres as the foundation for the cemetery and the first soldiers buried there died in a train wreck near Marietta. In 1868 the cemetery was named the Resaca Cemetery.  During these years the Confederate widows scoured these local battlefields for the remains of Confederate soldiers who they brought to this cemetery to their final resting place.  In 1898 the Kennesaw Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was organized and refurbished the grounds.  In 1908 the UDC erected the monument to the Confederate soldiers buried there and turned the property over to the state of Georgia.  An inscription on one of the monuments states, "This is not a cemetery of graves but a rare garden of heroes." General Clemet A. Evans, July 7, 1908.

Life Sized Bronze Statues of Confederate Widows Standing at their Husband's Graves