Old Town Cemetery - Doniphan, MO
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 36° 36.988 W 090° 49.686
15S E 694226 N 4054523
No entrance, civilian graves are inside a concrete wall, veterans are out in the lawn ...many sites today are unmarked, this area having been flooded by the Current River many, many times...
Waymark Code: WM11WBM
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 12/28/2019
Views: 1
County of marker: Ripley County
Location of marker: Charles St., Heritage Homestead, Doniphan
Number of graves: 95 (?) Plus
Number of people buried higher because 1 grave has 12 bodies
Marker erected by: Doniphan Neighborhood Assistance Program
The first military buried here, is Lt A. Ponder, victum of the Indian Wars. then there were the KIA's of the Christmas Massacre...that set it as a military burial site. And since then, Civil War deaths in the area were buried here, making it, in my opinion, a veterans cemetery section
Marker text:
OLD TOWN CEMETERY
This cemetery was established in 1847 for public burial. In 1897 many graves were moved to Oak Ridge Cemetery, now known as the City Cemetery.
The purpose of the concrete wall around the family plot of Dr. William Proctor was to keep livestock from knocking down tombstones and disturbing the grave site.
Most grave sites were unmarked. Important people whose graves are marked are Lemuel Kittrell, Doniphans' first settler, 12 soldiers killed at the Christmas Day Massacre, Capt. James Madison Ponder also killed in the Civil War and Zebedee Washington Stephens who has many descendants still living in Ripley County
"Christmas Day Massacre
The fact that it's getting close to Christmas reminds me of one of the most notorious incidents of the Civil War in the Ozarks, the Christmas Day Massacre (also called the Wilson Massacre) that occurred in Ripley County on December 25, 1863. In late 1863, Union troops captured Centreville, the county seat of Reynolds County, but on December 21 a company of Colonel Tim Reeves's 15th Missouri cavalry regiment under Captain Jesse Pratt recaptured the town and took about 100 Federal soldiers prisoner. Pratt hauled the captives south to Ripley County and turned them over to Colonel Reeves. On the 23rd, Major James Wilson was sent out from Pilot Knob with two companies of Union militia in pursuit of the rebels. On December 25, Reeves was camped at Pulliam's farm in the southeast part of Ripley with about 150 of his men, along with the Federal prisoners, and at least sixty civilians from the region, many of them family members of Reeves's soldiers, to celebrate Christmas. Reeves, who was also a Baptist minister, conducted religious services, and then the group sat down for a holiday dinner. Suddenly the festivites were violently interrupted when Wilson and his men charged into the camp and started firing. Only about thirty-five Confederates, who were guarding the prisoners, had arms, with the rest having stacked their weapons during dinner, and the rebel camp was quickly overrun. At least thirty rebels were killed, and most of the rest were taken prisoner, although Reeves managed to escape. Some accounts claim that many of the civilians, including women and children, were also slaughtered, although this point is in dispute.
What seems without doubt, however, is that this incident clearly illustrates that peace on earth did not reign in the Missouri Ozarks during America's Civil War, even on a sacred holiday like Christmas Day. The war in our state was a bitter provincial conflict, with Missourians often killing other Missourians, and such was the case with the Christmas Day massacre. The war in Missouri was often driven by revenge, and the aftermath of the Christmas Day massacre also illustrates this aspect of the war. When Major Wilson and a handful of his men were captured during General Sterling Price's invasion of Missouri in the fall of 1864, they were turned over to Colonel Reeves, who ordered the captives summarily executed in retaliation for the Ripley County atrocity." ~ Ozarks History