Certain landmarks across the South have special meaning to the men of the Barton-Stovall Brigade.
Westview Cemetery – Atlanta, Georgia
Westview Cemetery in Atlanta has quietly stopped flying the Battle Flag on Confederate knoll. This site has connections to the Barton-Stovall Brigade. With Oakland Cemetery at near capacity, Westview Cemetery was established in 1884 on 600 acres southwest of downtown Atlanta. The Battle of Ezra Church had been found near this site in 1864. The trench lines are still visible if you look for them.
In 1888, William Loundes Calhoun, the former captain of Company K of the 42nd Georgia, negotiated the transfer of the knoll to the Fulton County Confederate Veterans Association. Calhoun had been elected commander of the FCCVA that year and would be re-elected in 1890 (the veterans group would join the United Confederate Veterans as Camp #159 in 1890). In exchange for the knoll where members would be buried, the association agreed to erect a monument in the center of the plot. The marble shaft arrived in New York harbor from Italy in March 1889. The 20-foot monument is capped by an infantry soldier carved from Carrera marble. It remains today, a handsome work of art, “Erected by the Fulton County Veterans Association in Memory of their Dead Comrades.”
Below is a list of soldiers (drawn from Joe Bailey’s Cemetery Project) from the brigade buried at Westview Cemetery.
Cliff Roberts
Battle of Ruff’s Mill
The Battle of Ruff’s Mill was fought on July 4, 1864 along the banks of Nickajack Creek, in the vicinity of Ruff’s Mill and Concord Road covered bridge. The battle was a brigade sized fight which means all five regiments of Stovall’s Brigade were engaged with about the same sized force of Yankees. About 5,000 men on each side.
On the evening of July 2nd, Joseph Johnston abandoned his Kennesaw line and the town of Marietta and pulled back to the Smyrna Line, a six-mile impregnable bridgehead on the northern banks of the Chattahoochee River. Teams of slaves had recently built a double-line of deep ditches, impressive redoubts, all lined with rows of sharpened abatis logs. Though the Rebel soldiers had the Chattahoochee River at their backs, they were confident that they could defend the railroad bridge and the various pontoon bridges that crossed the river. “How long we will remain here, I can’t say,” wrote Captain Lovick Thomas to his wife on July 4th, 1864. He added, “We have good works, at the River, and are now fortifying here.” According to Francis Nash of the Milton Tigers, the 42nd Georgia was in a line of battle on the heights of the riverbank just south of the railroad bridge. They were the extreme left of the Confederate army, in sight of the village of Vinings Station, and only eight miles from Atlanta. “We have a good position and can’t be whipped out of it,” wrote Captain Thomas. Heavy skirmishing took place here on the afternoon of July 4, 1864, as the Federals probed the strong Confederate lines. This was the little reported Battle of Ruff’s Mill.
Mike Griggs has submitted the following: My great grandfather and two of his nephews were in Co. B, 41st Georgia and they were helping defend the line on the South side of Nickajack Creek. Following is the family account of what happened:
The Union forces had dug a mine or a “cave ” into the bank of Nickajack Creek and filled it with black powder. The explosive was suddenly ignited, and the bank blew up in a large crater. Southern soldiers above the cave were killed and injured. The two nephews, William Green Berry Griggs and Benjamin Griggs (Co. B, 41st Georgia) ran down the slope into the crater to help the wounded. While they were searching for the wounded, Union soldiers appeared and captured them.
At this point let me suggest that there may be the remains of a crater on the South side of Nickajack Creek. It may appear as a “notch” in the stream edge. It was big and it did happen.
This explosion caused utter confusion. The officers on the rim of the slope to the creek reported that Green and Benjamin had deserted in all the commotion (smoke, screaming men, shouts for help and orders). Actually, they had been captured. Since the official records had them as “deserters” they could not get their Confederate pensions. In 1912, survivors that knew them wrote letters to the State Pension authorities on their behalf stating that they were captured and were not deserters. This letter writing went on until 1926 when the Pensions were finally awarded. Green Griggs received his Pension of $30 per month until he died in 1929.
Click here for Jack Gibson’s Gurley Family Confederates
Captured in Kentucky, 1862
After the Confederates under Generals Braxton Bragg & Kirby Smith ended their 33-day “invasion” of Kentucky, and fell back to Tennessee, Federal officials began consolidating their Rebel prisoners in Louisville. The captured Confederates were loaded on steamboats and taken to Vicksburg, MS by way of Cairo, IL. Many of the men from the 41st Georgia were wounded soldiers from the Battle of Perryville. The Rebels were formally exchanged in Vicksburg on November 29, 1862 and Dec 4, 1862. Below are names appearing on the Federal list of prisoners consolidated at Louisville. For many of these men, there is no listing of their Kentucky capture in their official Confederate Service Records.
Cliff Roberts
Friendship Cemetery
Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi is the final resting place of CSA General Stephen Dill Lee, as well as several hundred Confederates, including 16 members of the 41st Georgia.
Cotton Mill Prison in Madison, Georgia
Upon completing their training at Camp McDonald, the 42nd Georgia was sent to Camp Van Dorn near Knoxville. In April 1862, under orders from General Kirby Smith, a large detachment of junior officers and soldiers from the 42nd was designated to escort 476 “Tory” political prisoners from Knoxville to Milledgeville, Georgia. Confederate authorities were taking no chances with potential spies, inciters and saboteurs in East Tennessee. Under the command of 25-year-old Captain William L. Calhoun, the expedition got underway on April 20th. Orders were changed in route and the prisoners were instead taken to the abandoned Madison Steam Factory Cotton Mill by the side of the Georgia Railroad. The large building was surrounded by outbuildings and enclosed by a tall plank fence complete with gates. It made for a suitable prison. There were no local soldiers available to assume authority over the prisoners, so Calhoun and his detachment became reluctant prison guards for the next eight months.
Union officers and soldiers captured at the Battle of Shiloh were soon deposited at the Cotton Mill Prison in Madison. A 36-page handwritten registry, now at the University of Georgia, holds the names of 891 prisoners held at the mill from April to December 1862. 13 of the prisoners of war died that year. Generals Benjamin Prentiss and Thomas Crittenden were among the Federal officers held there. Members of the Andrews Raiders are listed under “Bridge Burners & Engine Thieves.” Ira Ford, a member of the 18th Wisconsin, recorded a favorable impression of Captain Calhoun, “a nephew of Senator Calhoun of South Carolina.” He probably did not know that the young Confederate officer was the son of James M. Calhoun, the wartime mayor of Atlanta. Ford recounted that 24 members of the 18th Wisconsin spent three weeks digging an 84-foot clandestine tunnel from the cellar basement to the outside. Before an escape could be attempted, however, Ford and his messmates were put on boxcars and transported to Augusta for an exchange. The Cotton Mill Prison was eventually turned into a hospital by Confederate authorities. After eight months of duty as prison guards, Calhoun made a personal plea to Henry Wirz (later the commander of the Andersonville Prison) that he and his men be returned to their regiment. Calhoun’s contingent of men finally rejoined the 42nd around November 1862. The cotton mill was burned by Slocum’s XX Corps in Sherman’s March to the Sea.
After the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, several Federal soldiers sought out Captain William Calhoun of the Calhoun Guards. In 1862, they had been his former prisoners at the Cotton Mill Prison in Madison, Georgia. Many walked several miles to confront him in a reversal of roles. Some came to praise the 26-year-old son of the Atlanta mayor, while others cursed him. Captain Ira Ford of the 18th Wisconsin invited Calhoun and nine of his former guards to his tent where he offered them coffee. “They had not had a cup of coffee for four months,” recalled Ford, “I told them that I knew just how they felt.”
Recently I found a roster of Calhoun’s detachment at the Georgia Archives. While these men would rather have been with their regiment at Cumberland Gap, their absence from the front lines may have saved their lives, as they avoided the death from disease that was the fate of many of the Confederates serving in East Tennessee.
Rose Hill Cemetery, Macon, Georgia
“Soldier’s Square,” is the Confederate Section of Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon. 884 Confederates are buried here, including seven from the Stovall Brigade. Another 882 former Confederates are buried in family plots throughout the large cemetery.
Alta Vista Cemetery, Gainesville, Georgia
It is debatable which cemetery holds the largest number of men from our brigade. A good case could be made for Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg, Bethel Cemetery in Knoxville, or Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. A sleeper in this list might be Alta Vista in Gainesville which holds 31 of our men. The largest majority were from Company F, the Hall Light Guards, of the 43rd Georgia. Alta Vista was established in 1874 and is still an active cemetery with more than 15,000 memorials. A Longstreet Memorial Ceremony is held there every January by the Dahlonega SCV Camp.
Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia
170 men from Stovall’s Brigade are buried at Oakland Cemetery. Many of the men brought down with illness were sent to the Fairgrounds Hospital, which was next to this cemetery. Many of the 1864 deaths were men mortally wounded at the Battle of Resaca.
Some 70,000 people are interred over Oakland’s 48 acres, including 6,900 in the Confederate section (of which 3,000 are unknown). Oakland is an excellent example of a Victorian-style cemetery and reflects the “garden cemetery” movement started and exemplified by Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts.
The Confederate Lion Statue was removed in 2021 but the 65-foot confederate obelisk still remains. North of the obelisk are buried four Confederate generals, John B. Gordon, Lucius J. Gartrell, Clement A. Evans, and Alfred Iverson, Jr. Famous people buried at Oakland include Margaret Mitchell, golfer Bobby Jones, and country singer Kenny Rogers.
