Our Confederate Dead - Confederate Memorial State Historic Site - Higginsville, MO - Missouri Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

County of Cemetery: Lafayette County.
Location of Cemetery: 1st St., inside Missouri Confederate Memorial State Historic Site, Jct. MO-213, busi. MO-13, & MO-20, 2 miles N. of Higginsville
Marker location: Ar entrance to cemetery
Monument Erected by: Erected by the Missouri Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Gloria Victis
Markers Erected by: Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of State Parks

Marker Text:

Our Confederate Dead
Confederate Memorial Cemetery was established early in the history of the Confederate Home in Missouri. It became the final resting place for 693 Confederate veterans and 108 of their wives.

The first interment was in 1892; the last occurred in 1950 when John T. Graves, the last resident Confederate veteran, died at age 107. His headstone is simply inscribed, "JOHN T. GRAVES, THE LAST OF G. SHELBY'S MEN."

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, one of the Confederate Home's founding organizations, erected the large granite monument that dominates the center of the cemetery. Dedicated to all who served the Confederacy in June of 1906, the monument was inspired by the Lion of Lucerne statue in Lucerne, Switzerland. That monument commemorates the Swiss Guards massacred by a mob while protecting the French King Louis XVI during the French Revolution. The lion, mortally wounded yet proud and defiant, was deemed an appropriate symbol for the Confederacy. The lion's forepaw rests upon the Great Seal of the Confederacy, which features a mounted George Washington surrounded by a wreath pf agricultural products vital to the South. The United Daughters of the Confederacy emblem is centered directly below the lion and set against the first, second, and third national flags of the Confederacy and the Confederate battle flag.

Web link: [Web Link] History of Mark: In the decades immediately following the Civil War, Missourians expressed concern for the plight of their aging and ill Confederate veterans. In response, the Ex-Confederate Association of Missouri formed in order to build and maintain a Missouri Home for Confederate Veterans. They hoped to provide housing, food, and health care for Missouri’s Confederate veterans—a daunting prospect, especially considering they proposed to undertake the expense without the help of the state government. They felt that private funding would demonstrate popular “gratitude…and true sympathy” for the veterans without making “them a charge upon the public and a burden to the community.”1 Despite such idealistic rhetoric, the Ex-Confederates struggled to raise the funds necessary to begin work on the Home. In 1890, however, a group of women in St. Louis organized to adopt the project. They christened themselves the Daughters of the Confederacy and quickly launched an aggressive fundraising campaign on behalf of the Home. By hosting dances, picnics, and socials, they eventually raised $25,000—enough to purchase a site and begin construction.2 Thanks to the Daughters’ efforts, the Home formally opened on June 9, 1893. Nestled on prime Missouri farmland, the Home grew into a campus of thirty buildings, including dormitories, a chapel, and at least fourteen private cottages. There was also a cemetery and manicured park land. For the most part, however, the grounds remained open farmland, where the veterans raised crops and livestock. Not only did the residents produce their own food, but they also generated their own electricity and steam heat. In effect, the Home was an entirely self-sufficient community. Superintendent Capt. F. P. Bronaugh pronounced it “the grandest charity in the country.” Additional point: Not Listed

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