"...The trace of a dismantled Fort -

Lay in the forest nave

And in the shadow near my path -

I saw a soldier's grave..."

Lying in honored glory rests

Pvt. Albert Ellis, 36th Batallion Cavalry, Army of

Northern Virginia, CSA.

Photograph taken in Teays Valley, near Hurricane, West Virginia, which was once
a part of Virginia.

Never Forget...

After the war for Southern independence and the Southern

Holocaust of destruction waged against the South by Union

forces, the people had a lot to mourn. Buildings and other

property could be rebuilt, but the loss of the thousands of

CSA soldiers could never be replaced this side of Glory.

Grieving mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts and other

relatives and friends sought a way to honor these fallen

martyrs. The practice of decorating graves was begun by

these ladies.

On a Saturday in June, 1866, under the auspices of the

Ladies Memorial Association, the people of Charleston,

South Carolina, traveled three miles in the face of drawn

bayonets of the Federal occupation forces to pay tribute

to the memory of the 1,700 slain CSA soldiers in Magnolia

Cemetery.

There at five in the afternoon, the widows, mothers, and

sisters of the martyred heroes placed "wreaths of magnolia

with laurel and roses intertwined... bound with white and

black ribbon" upon the freshly mounded graves of those who

had defended "to the death of our lives, our homes, our

possessions and our liberties; our shrines and our altars."

These stanzas below by the South's Poet laureate, Henry

Timrod, were read.

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!-

Though yet no marble column craves

The pilgrim here to pause.

In seeds of laurel in the earth,

The garlands of your fame are sown;

And, somewhere, waiting for its birth,

The shaft is in the stone.

Meanwhile, your sisters for the years

Which hold in trust your storied tombs,

Bring all they now can give you - tears,

And these memorial blooms.

Small tributes, but your shades will smile

As proudly on these wreaths today,

As when some cannon-molded pile

Shall overlook this Bay.

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!

There is no holier spot of ground,

Than where defeated valor lies

By mourning beauty crowned.

Never Forget...

Many of the honored Southern dead were never

identified. These nameless heroes are known but to God...

This poem by Mary Ashley Townsend and set to music by

what I feel are the South's finest musicians, the Rebelaires,

pays tribute to these unknown honored dead.

A Georgia Volunteer

Far up the lonely mountain side

my wandering footsteps led

The moss lay thick beneath my feet

the pines sighed overhead

The trace of a dismantled Fort

lay in the forest nave

And in the shadow near my path

I saw a soldier's grave

The bramble wrestled with the weed

upon the lowly mound

The simple headboard, rudely writ

had rotted to the ground

I raised it with a reverent hand

from dust its words to clear

But, time had blotted all but these

"A Georgia Volunteer"

Chorus:

Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll

adown thy rocky glen

ABove thee lies the grave of one

of Stonewall Jackson's men

Beneath the ceader and the pine

in solitude austere

Unknown, unnamed, forgotten lies

A Georgia Volunteer

I saw the toad and scaly snake

from tangled covert start

And hide themselves umong the weeds

above the dead man's heart

But, undisturbed in sleep profound

unheeding, there he lay

His coffin, but the mountain soil

his shroud, Confederate gray

Yet, whence he came, what lip shall say

whose tounge will never tell

What desolated hearths and hearts

have been because he fell

What sad-eyed maiden braids her hair

her hair which he held so dear

One lock which perchance lies with

The Georgia Volunteer

Chorus

What mother with long watching eyes

and white lips, cold and dumb

waits with appaling patience for

her darling boy to come

Her boy whose mountain grave swells up

but one of many a scar

Cut on the face of our fair land

by gory-handed war

What fights he fought, what wounds he wore

are all unknown to fame

Remember, on his lonely grave

there is not e'en a name

That he fought well and bravely, too

and held his country dear

We know else he had never been

A Georgia Volunteer

Chorus

A Georgia Volunteer....

Never Forget Their Memory

and Their Sacrifice!!!!