Mississippi: Remembrance Set for Key Civil War Struggle
CHAMPION HILL, Miss. — One hundred fifty years after the bloody, tide-turning Battle of Champion Hill, key in the Vicksburg Campaign, the loudest ruckus was a leaf blower.
This site had served as Gen. Grant’s headquarters, but the main buzz this day, once a new historical marker got temporarily situated, was about lunch. The only conflict came between a four-wheeler’s tires and the occasional mud rut on Old Jackson Road. And the arrivals, thankfully, weren’t of wounded soldiers, but of tables, chairs, banners and tents.
The commemorative medal is nestled amid bullets and fragments recovered from the Champion Hill battlefield. / Sherry Lucas/The Clarion-Ledger
On the Champion Hill Missionary Baptist Church grounds, members of the Champion Hill Heritage Foundation directed preparations for its biggest program to date, Saturday’s A Day At Champion Hill Sesquicentennial Commemoration Event. Among highlights at the 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. event are speaker Bertram Hayes-Davis (great-great-grandson of Jefferson Davis and executive director of Beauvoir), re-enactors in a Blue & Gray Skirmish, scene-setting dioramas, stories and tours, a historic marker unveiling and a fried chicken lunch on the grounds.
It’ll also host visitors whose ancestors fought in the wooded hills and ravines of the Battle of Champion Hill, on a battlefield that covers 10 square miles. Descendants will receive honorary medallions commemorating the battle’s 150th anniversary, suspended from a blue and gray ribbon. On the front, soldiers are manning a cannon. On back, Blue- and Gray-suited soldiers shake hands.
“It is to honor the ones who fought on both sides … who gave all they had to give,” said Sid Champion V, great-great grandson of Sid and Matilda Champion, who’d settled there in 1853. His great-great-grandmother, on that fateful day of May 16, 1863, “saw her house turned into a hospital with dead and dying in her living room and yard.” So when he mentions paying homage to men on both sides, he’s quick to add “and the women, too.”
More than 200 soldiers’ descendants from 22 states are expected Saturday, at last estimate.
“We have a total of around 175 and haven’t finished yet,” heritage foundation member Becky Drake said earlier this week. “Every day there are more on my computer.” Her husband, Jim Drake, designed the medallion to mark the special milestone and the battle’s significance in the Civil War. At first they thought 50 might be enough, but interest quickly outstripped that initial order.
“Boy, did we get a response. It just went viral,” Becky Drake said. Medallions will also be for sale to the public, for $25.
Descendants’ stories echo the personal tragedy of the Civil War on the family front. Among those coming is Megg Norberg of Norfolk, Mass., great-great-granddaughter of Col. Skidmore Harris. Harris commanded the 43rd Georgia Regiment, fought in the Battle of Champion Hill, was wounded in the leg, taken prisoner and died the next day, leaving behind a 27-year-old widow with a 3-year-old daughter. Norberg is flying in from Boston, her 80-year-old parents are coming from New York and her brother is driving from Jacksonville, Fla., for the Champion Hill event.
A Google search last fall brought her face to face with a bronze portrait of her ancestor Harris on a stone in Vicksburg National Military Park. “It’s been there since 1919, and none of us were aware of it, not even … his daughter, my great-grandmother,” Norberg said. “I was blown away by that.” Her family Civil War memorabilia includes a wedding locket, a widow’s brooch with his picture and lock of hair and an ambrotype (photo on a sheet of glass).
“It’s unique and special to have so much information about your ancestors. And then on top of it, that it’s American history, to have a connection like this to the Civil War.” She may photograph the bronze portrait and frame it with the medallion. “I plan on sharing all this with everybody in the family,” including Harris’ 13 great-great-great-grandchildren.
Chris Gooch of Nashville and his son Christopher James (C.J.) are coming, too, to honor the death of Capt. Samuel Jones Ridley, Gooch’s great-great grandfather. With them will be a carved fox horn inscribed with “Vicksburg,” a gift to Ridley from one of his men that passed down to Gooch, along with a circa 1860 ambrotype of Ridley. He’s only seen his ancestor’s grave once, when he came to Mississippi for a Confederate Medal of Honor presentation, he said. “This upcoming trip will give me the opportunity to see it again with my son.”
Becky Drake was particularly struck by one descendant’s story of a Confederate soldier who took a bullet through his neck on the battlefield, was saved by a Union soldier and was later able to re-enter civilian life.
Saturday’s event is a joint effort of the Champion Hill Heritage Foundation and the Champion Hill Missionary Baptist Church. Matilda Champion deeded the property to the Champion Hill Missionary Baptist Church Society in 1897.
On Saturday, tractor-led wagons will transport visitors along Old Jackson Road to the Hill of Death as the Blue and Gray skirmish; strollers, too, can make the two-third- to three-fourth-mile trek under the old road’s wooded canopy.
Church member Bertha Lewis, who’s lived on the Champion Hill battlefield 52 years and can see the Hill of Death out her back window, wrote the poem, “I Was There,” which will be read at Saturday’s program. “Being on the ground, you just can feel the presence of the soldiers’ spirits,” she said.
She’s made mannequins portraying the Champion family, Union and Confederate soldiers, Lula Townsend (a key figure in the church and community history) and Darwina Loud (a freedman schoolteacher). Dioramas will also include a surgeon’s tent with the amputation table — the original used by surgeons during and after the battle. “You can see the blood-stains of the men if you flip the leaves over,” Champion said.
Mississippi tourism officials anticipate a great year in tourism from the Civil War-related milestone, particularly in Vicksburg, Raymond, New Albany and in north Mississippi, tourism director Malcolm White said.
Additional events in May include commemorations Friday, Sunday and Wednesday and the Vicksburg Sesquicentennial Commemoration: Signature Event May 23-27 with open-air concerts, commemorative stamps, programs, Memorial Day activities and more, all at Vicksburg National Military Park. The Civil War Trust, Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, brings its annual meeting of The Color Bearers, as its high-level supporters are known, to Jackson on May 28.
Cultural heritage tourists overall tend to be the biggest spenders among travelers, with Civil War tourists among the biggest spenders of that set, cultural heritage program manager Sarah McCullough said, citing a Civil War Trust study. Mississippi State University’s Ulysses S. Grant presidential library also contributes to a rise in Civil War-related tourism, she said.
-Sherry Lucas, clarionledger.com
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Florida: U.S. Colored Troops Celebrate Civil War Sesquicentennial
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The 2nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) will hold events Saturday, May 25, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The festivities begin with a parade and day in the park entititled a “Walk through Living History.” The parade begins at 8 a.m. at the corner of Liberty and Perry Street, which is near Florida A&M University’s Bragg Stadium. The procession will then travel south down Perry and turn right onto Okaloosa Street, ending at Speed Spencer Stephens Park at the Corner of Okaloosa and Saxon streets.
Participants in the 2012 Emancipation & Abolitionist Ball.
At the park, there will be various activities, performers, and vendors for all ages to enjoy. In addition, African-American descendants of the Seminole American Indian tribe and reenactors representing the USCT and Buffalo Soldiers will be featured in living history demonstrations.
The celebration will continue later that evening at the third annual Emancipation & Abolitionist Ball. The event will be held from 8 p.m. – 1 a.m. at the Florida National Guard Armory, which is located on 1225 Easterwood Drive in Tallahassee.
Entertainment will be provided by the Leon Anderson Band featuring Avis Berry. Ball attendees are encouraged to wear Civil War period attire. An old-fashioned meal will be served.
All events are free and open to the public.
The 2nd Infantry Regiment USCT is an organization that partners with the John G. Riley House Museum of African-American History and Culture. The group promotes the history of the Civil War and the African American presence in pre-war, war, and post-war events.
For more information on the events and the USCT, visit www.rileymuseum.org. You can also call Jarvis Rosier at 850-509-0295.
-wtxl.com
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Virginia: Confederate Flag Ban Challenged
RICHMOND, Va. — The Sons of Confederate Veterans appealed to a federal appeals court Thursday to get its battle flag back on city light poles in Lexington, the final resting place of Gen. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.
The Confederate States of America Battle Flag that the Sons of Confederate Veterans wants back on city light poles in Lexington, Virginia.
The Southern heritage group contends the city snuffed its speech and violated a 20-year-old court order when it enacted an ordinance in September 2011 banishing its flags from holders on dozens of city light poles, other than the city, state and U.S. flags.
The three judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which seemed skeptical of the appeal, typically rule in several weeks or more.
The group is appealing a decision last summer by a federal judge who concluded the ordinance did not violate a 1993 consent decree, which blocked the city’s attempt to ban the display of the Confederate flag during a parade honoring Jackson.
The 2011 ordinance does not restrict the flying of the flag elsewhere in the city.
You can still march down Main Street with the flag? Judge Robert King asked.
“You can still do that,” replied Thomas E. Strelka, representing the SCV.
Strelka argued, however, that the ordinance had “closed a public forum” and the city’s action appeared to be directed at the group.
Jeremy E. Carroll, representing the city, said Lexington has the right to say who can used city-owned light poles and the regulation “treats everybody the same.” Local colleges that used to use the poles to fly their banners are also prohibited from using the poles.
City officials adopted the ordinance after they received hundreds of complaints after Confederate flags were planted in holders on light poles to mark Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday in Virginia.
The flags were provided by SCV, and the city authorized them to be flown on the city poles. The SCV also paid for city workers to install the flags on approximately 40 poles.
The Confederate flag remains a lightning rod in the South, especially among black Southerners who consider it a symbol of slavery. The NAACP launched an economic boycott of South Carolina in 1999 about the Confederate flag that
-Steve Skotak, The Associated Press
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South Carolina: Civil War Schoolhouse Staying Put
FLORENCE, S.C. — The final verdict is in.
The Henry Timrod Schoolhouse is staying where it is.
The one-room Henry Timrod Schoolhouse is planned to be moved into the new Florence County Museum courtyard next year where it will be restored able to once again allow for people to tour the one-room, 154-year-old building that Timrod taught in before the Civil War when he became the poet laureate of the Confederacy. The United Daughters of the Confederacy Ellison Capers Chapter 70 in Florence unanimously voted in July to donate the building and property to the Florence County Museum since the group could no longer maintain it the way the group wished. / GAVIN JACKSON
Florence County Council Chairman James Schofield, who battled with the City of Florence’s Design and Review Board and schoolhouse neighbors over a plan to move the little historic to the new Florence Museum, said he will assign up to $20,000 from the Council District 8 infrastructure allocation account to restore and protect the 155-year-old schoolhouse at its current location in the eponymous Timrod Park.
Timrod is the unofficial “poet laureate” of the Confederacy, a maudlin and morose writer who eulogized the South and its war-time woes. He taught at, and possibly lived in, the schoolhouse building around and during the Civil War. It was located on a plantation in what was then Darlington County at the time. The location was not far from the current site of Timrod Elementary School, also named for him, on Old Marion Road in northeastern Florence County.
Schofield said this week that the feuding is done and the schoolhouse war is at an end.
“There’s not going to be any issue between us and the Timrod Park neighbors,” Schofield said. “The Timrod Park schoolhouse is going to remain there. It will be repaired and fixed, but the museum owns it because the Daughters of the Confederacy gave it to (the museum). The museum will try to work out a way for people to see it when it’s appropriate.”
The schoolhouse became a source of controversy last July when United Daughters of the Confederacy Ellison Capers Chapter 70 in Florence donated the building to the Florence Museum. The museum planned to move the structure to the courtyard of its new location in downtown Florence, which is currently under construction, but members of the Timrod Neighborhood Association (TNA) said moving the building — which had been moved at least three times before locating to what was City Park in the 1930s — would strip the neighborhood of its identity.
In November, the Florence Design and Review Board (DRB) denied the county’s request to move the schoolhouse, but Florence County, led by Schofield, appealed the decision. The groups met for a mediation session per DRB protocol but could not arrive at a compromise. A final decision, several months after the original ruling, did not vary from the original. The county and museum’s only option at that point was to take the matter to court. Schofield said no one wanted to do that.
Schofield said the $20,000 the county will put into the project will go toward restoration costs and erecting a “security fence” around the schoolhouse to protect it from vandalism, a reoccurring problem. Each council district has funds allocated to it for infrastructure improvements. The councilman holding that district’s seat decides where the funds go, at his or her discretion.
Schofield, who is also a member of the museum board, said the decision to leave the building where it is instead moving it to the new museum on the corner of Dargan Street and Cheves Street downtown, where it was to be the centerpiece of a large courtyard, was made as construction came to a close.
Construction on the museum is expected to end sometime in July, with additional work needed to open the faculty near the start of 2014.
“The building is finishing up, and we had to make a decision one way or another,” Schofield said. “It can be fine over there (in the park) as long as it is protected and maintained. That’s what we want and what they (the TNA) want.”
The building has been poorly cared for in the past, when it was owned by the UDC but rested in the park. Its windows are currently boarded over, and it’s locked at all times.
-John Sweeny, florencenews.com
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South Carolina: Pickens County Honors Confederate Soldiers
A special ceremony was held Saturday morning to honor “those who wore the grey.”
The Confederate Memorial Day ceremony was hosted at the Hagood-Mauldin House and sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans Jefferson Davis Easley Camp 7 and 2nd South Carolina Regiment Pickens Camp 71.
Confederate Memorial Day ceremony held Saturday included an update on an effort to locate and recognize graves of all area Confederate soldiers and their wives. / JASON EVANS
“On behalf of the Pickens County Historical Society, we welcome you to our ceremony today at our home,” said Ken Nabors, Adjutant of Camp 7 and President of the Pickens County Historical Society.
The Hagood-Mauldin House is a fitting site for the annual Confederate Memorial Day ceremony.
Frances “Miss Queen” Hagood Mauldin hosted actual Confederate veterans at the house for many years, Nabors said.
“For over 57 years, Miss Queen hosted our actual veterans here on the grounds, the last one in 1947,” he said. “We’ve brought it back to the very location actual veterans were while we memorialize them today.”
The 16th Regiment presented the colors and Camp 71 Adjutant Ron Masters presided over the Pledge of Allegiance, Salute to the Flag of South Carolina and Salute to the Confederate Battle Flag and the reading of the Charge to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Camp #7 Chaplain Terry Lee Bailey gave the invocation.
The men and women of the time, including the era’s leaders, lived with honor, Bailey said, unlike the leaders of today.
Anne Sheriff spoke about the work being undertaken by a dedicated group of volunteers, the members of the Confederate Graves project, an effort to identify the graves of Confederate soldiers and their wives.
Sheriff said the project began when she was asked how Pickens County would celebrate the 150thanniversary of the Civil War.
She said her thoughts turned to the individual soldiers.
“Who would recognize the privates, the corporals, the sergeants, the captains, majors, colonels, generals buried in our local cemeteries throughout the South, that fought for Pickens County?” Sheriff said. “Who were the individual soldiers and their families? Where were their tombstones? Did they die on the field of battle? Were they buried in a federal cemetery, family cemetery, church cemetery or in some other state?”
An effort began to locate the graves and grave sites of all soldiers in Pickens County, she said.
“This meant locating the graves of every man who was born between 1805, 1810 and 1849,” Sheriff said.
The PCHS, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Central Heritage Society, the Faith Clayton Family Research Room and other groups were invited to take part.
J.B. Norris accompanies the group to identify the graves of Revolutionary War veterans.
On the third Thursday of each month, the group visits 3-4 cemeteries “looking for potential graves of our Pickens County soldiers,” Sheriff said.
After the grave sites are located, they are photographed, and GPS coordinates are entered.
“Then we go home for the month and search for information on the soldiers and their wives,” Sheriff said.
Often, the group can only find the wife’s name, then have to search for information on her husband.
“What excitement! What sadness! What stories they had to tell through their service records, newspaper reports and information from their grandchildren,” Sheriff said.
The information is published in the Old Pendleton District Genealogical Society newsletter and at the annual Reunion of Upcountry Families. The project began in July of 2011 and has visited over 80 of the 300 cemeteries in Pickens County.
“Before we go each month, we check the Pickens County cemetery books to look for certain graves,” Sheriff said.
Most of the area’s Confederate soldiers had died by the 1930s, but a few lived into the 1940s, Sheriff said. If a woman was born between 1810 and the 1860s, “there’s a good possibility she was married to a Confederate soldiers. So far, the group has located 700 soldiers, including several Union soldiers, prisoners of war and soldiers who were present at the surrender of Appomattox.
“We have finished all major cemeteries on the western side of Highway 178,” Sheriff said. They are now working on cemeteries between Highway 8 and Highway 178.
The work is not without its hardships.
“We visit the small cemeteries in the wintertime because of the snakes and chiggers,” Sheriff said. Other hardships include ants and yellowjackets.
The group is placing Confederate Crosses of Honor on the graves they’ve identified.
“We don’t have government money helping us with this project,” Sheriff said. “We need local Pickens County people.”
Donations to the Pickens County Historical Society can be allocated to the Confederate Graves project and are tax-deductible. PCHS Vice-President Wayne Kelley read the “Roll of Honor,” the names of those soldiers whose graves have been honored with Confederate Crosses of Honor.
The ceremony concluded with the singing of “Dixie.”
-Jason Evans, easleypatch.com
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