Entries - Entry Category: Cemeteries and Memorials

Memorial to Company A, Capital Guards

aka: Lest We Forget

The Memorial to Company A, Capital Guards is a Civil War commemorative monument created by sculptor Rudolf Schwarz. It was dedicated in City Park in Little Rock (Pulaski County) during the 1911 United Confederate Veterans Reunion. The monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 26, 1996. The base of the monument was vandalized in June 2020, and the sculpture of the soldier was moved to storage. Little Rock was selected to host the twenty-first annual United Confederate Veterans Reunion (May 16–18, 1911), and the Robert C. Newton Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) chose to use that occasion to dedicate a monument to the Little Rock men who had served in the Capital …

Mike Meyer Disfarmer Gravesite

Mike Disfarmer was a Heber Springs (Cleburne County) mid-twentieth-century portrait photographer whose work gained fame and popularity some years after his death. His Cleburne County gravesite was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 2009. Disfarmer is believed to have been born in Indiana in the early 1880s and to have moved to Stuttgart (Arkansas County) at an early age. After his father’s death, he and his mother then moved to Heber Springs. By 1926, he had built his own photography studio, where he lived and worked, earning a simple living for over forty years by photographing rural people for a few cents a sitting. Many believe that he changed his fame from Mike Meyer to …

Minnesota Monument

The Minnesota Monument, located in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and dedicated to the Civil War soldiers of Minnesota who died in Arkansas, was the first monument erected in Arkansas whose commissioning came from a government outside the state of Arkansas. The monument, also known as “Taps,” is located in the Little Rock National Cemetery at 2523 Springer Boulevard. During the Civil War, several Minnesota regiments saw service in Arkansas, the Third Minnesota Infantry being one of the first regiments to enter the fallen capital city of Little Rock in 1863. Approximately 162 of those Minnesota soldiers died while serving in Arkansas. Of those, thirty-six are buried in the Little Rock National Cemetery. In 1913, the Minnesota state legislature established the …

Monticello Confederate Monument

The Monticello Confederate Monument is a commemorative sculpture erected in 1915 on the grounds of the Drew County Courthouse by the W. F. Slemons Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to commemorate local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. It was later moved to Oakland Cemetery. As was the case in many Arkansas cities, the W. F. Slemons Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, based in Monticello (Drew County), decided around the beginning of the twentieth century to raise a monument on the courthouse grounds to honor county residents who had fought for the Confederacy. The Slemons Chapter was named for William Ferguson Slemons, a Monticello lawyer and politician …

Monument to Confederate Women

With the rise of memorial groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, commemorating the sacrifice of those who fought in the Civil War became a major theme of popular remembrance. Recognizing women’s sacrifices during the war was a large part of this. On May 1, 1913, Little Rock (Pulaski County) became home to the South’s second monument to the women of the Confederacy (the first being erected in South Carolina the previous year). The monument is cast in bronze upon a marble, concrete, and granite base. It depicts a woman seated, a young boy to her right holding a military-style drum, and a young girl to her left, all bidding farewell to a standing husband and father departing …

Mount Holly Cemetery

Located in Little Rock (Pulaski County), Mount Holly Cemetery is often called the Westminster Abbey of Arkansas, a name that seems justified by the great number of individuals of significance in the fields of art, literature, religion, and politics who are buried there. Eleven Arkansas governors are interred therein, as well as thirteen Arkansas Supreme Court justices, four United States senators, four Confederate generals, and twenty-one Little Rock mayors. Mount Holly Cemetery dates from February 23, 1843, when ground was deeded by two leading citizens, Chester Ashley and Roswell Beebe, to the city of Little Rock. The cemetery is located on a four-square-block site between 11th and 13th streets and from Broadway to Gaines Street. Before the establishment of Mount …

Mountain Home Cemetery, Historic Section

The Mountain Home Cemetery, Historic Section, is located five blocks south of the Baxter County Courthouse at the intersection of Baker Street and 11th Street in Mountain Home (Baxter County). The cemetery, which is located on a hill and has a U-shaped driveway that goes through it, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 13, 2020. The Mountain Home Cemetery is a collection of parcels that have been donated and purchased over the years from individual landowners. The first acre was donated to the city by Milus S. and Catherine Casey Paul to be used as a cemetery when the city was laid out in 1874. Ten years later, when incorporation papers were filed, the map …

Norristown Cemetery

The Norristown Cemetery is the last remnant of Norristown, an early settlement in Pope County. The earliest dated marker in the cemetery is from 1853 and the most recent from 1934. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 14, 1995. Norristown was designated the county seat in the early 1830s and served as such until the 1840 creation of Yell County from part of Pope County necessitated the movement of the seat to Dover (Pope County), a more central location. The town experienced two military engagements during the Civil War, the first on May 19, 1864, and the second on September 6, 1864. The town suffered a decline in population after construction of the …

Oakland Cemetery

Oakland Cemetery in Camden (Ouachita County) was the first cemetery of that city and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It encompasses approximately twenty acres and has approximately 683 graves. The cemetery’s Forrest Hill entombs Confederates who died in battle near Camden at both the Engagement at Poison Springs on April 18, 1864, and the Action at Marks’ Mills on April 25, 1864. The land for the cemetery was donated by Major William Bradley in the early 1830s. The first known grave bears a monument reading, “First grave in Cemetery. The body of an unknown little girl who died on a flat bottom boat on the Ouachita River was buried before 1840. Chain around the grave was from …

Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery

aka: Oakland & Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park

Oakland & Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park was established in 1862 when the City of Little Rock (Pulaski County) purchased a 160-acre estate in order to accommodate the Civil War dead. Through the years, this 160-acre estate has been carved into seven distinct cemeteries: Oakland, National, an eleven-acre Confederate, a one-acre Confederate, Fraternal, Jewish Oakland, and Agudath Achim. Today, 108 acres of the original 160 remain as burial grounds. The cemeteries have seen more than 62,000 burials since the first in 1863. The land was originally “christened Oakland, probably because the site which was chosen for it was natural forest, wooded principally with oaks,” according to an 1862 Arkansas Gazette article. The need for a city cemetery then, during the Civil …

Oaks Cemetery

Variously known over time as Twin Oaks, the African Cemetery, or the Colored Cemetery, Oaks Cemetery is a historic African American cemetery located adjacent to the National Cemetery in Fayetteville (Washington County). Oaks Cemetery is the only location specifically set aside for African American burials in the city. A large percentage of Black citizens who lived and died in Fayetteville in the decades after the Civil War are buried there. Founded in 1867, Oaks Cemetery was placed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places on December 3, 2014. There are 270 identifiable graves in Oaks Cemetery. An Arkansas Archeological Survey investigation of a small area in the eastern, older part of the cemetery found twelve unmarked graves, which leaves open …

Old Rondo Cemetery—Confederate Section

Old Rondo Cemetery—Confederate Section, located at 1612 Smith Road in Rondo (Miller County), commemorates Confederate soldiers from Texas who died of disease in Rondo in 1862. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 22, 2004. On June 12, 1862, Brigadier General Henry Eustace McCulloch ordered all Confederate troops located east of Tyler, Texas, to march to Little Rock (Pulaski County), which was threatened by Samuel Curtis’s Union army. These troops included the Nineteenth Texas Infantry Regiment under Colonel Richard Waterhouse. At least seven companies of the Nineteenth were stationed at Rondo, just past the Arkansas-Texas state line, from July through early September. While the men were camped at Rondo, measles struck, killing dozens of Waterhouse’s …

Palarm Bayou Pioneer Cemetery

The Palarm Bayou Pioneer Cemetery, located northeast of Arkansas Highway 365 and west of Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church near Morgan (Pulaski County), is the historic burial ground of the pioneering Wilson, Danley, and Boyle families, with its earliest interment dating to 1837. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 2005. The Palarm Bayou Pioneer Cemetery contains ten marked burials and one depression that may contain an unmarked grave. Nine of the burials are bordered on the west side with a partially collapsed stone wall and contain the remains of the three pioneer families. The tenth burial is surrounded with an elaborate wrought-iron fence and holds the 1886 grave of neighbor John Ferguson. The cemetery …

Paragould War Memorial

The Paragould War Memorial is a Statue of Liberty replica raised at the Greene County Courthouse in 1924 to honor the men of the county who had served and died in World War I. According to American Legion records, 476 Greene County men served in the U.S. military during World War I, and forty men died while in service. In the 1920s, the people of the county decided to honor them with a memorial at the Greene County Courthouse in Paragould. A public effort raised $2,000 to pay for the monument. They chose a Statue of Liberty replica copyrighted by Chicago, Illinois, sculptor John Paulding as the centerpiece of their memorial, perhaps eschewing the sculptor’s doughboy-style Over the Top design …

Pine Bluff Confederate Monument

The Pine Bluff Confederate Monument is a commemorative sculpture erected in 1910 on the grounds of Pine Bluff High School by the David O. Dodd Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to commemorate a young spy and the area men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. It was later moved to the grounds of the Jefferson County Courthouse. In 1907, the David O. Dodd Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy—named for a young spy hanged in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1864—decided to join other chapters around the state in sponsoring a monument to honor the local men who had fought in the Confederate army. The Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) …

Pine Ridge Community Cemetery

There are over 500 graves in the Pine Ridge Community Cemetery (originally Waters Cemetery) on Old Waters Highway in Pine Ridge (Montgomery County). Pine Ridge is between Oden (Montgomery County) and Cherry Hill (Polk County), one and a half miles east of the Montgomery-Polk county line on Arkansas Highway 88. The cemetery remains active in the twenty-first century. Most early settlers in the area were southern farmers and their families, traveling west by wagon train (farm wagons) throughout the 1800s. The valleys and streams fulfilled their needs, and so they stayed, as many descendants continued to do. The Ouachita National Forest constitutes over seventy percent of Montgomery County, so there is little industry other than farming, forestry, and tourism. The …

Pyeatte-Mason Cemetery

The Pyeatte-Mason Cemetery is a small burial ground located in Maumelle (Pulaski County). It contains the graves of some of the early settlers of Crystal Hill, the first town in Pulaski County. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 7, 1996. The first settlers to the Crystal Hill area arrived in 1812. The Pyeatte and Carnahan families were originally from Alabama and arrived in Arkansas in 1811. After some time at Arkansas Post, the families continued up the Arkansas River and selected a site near Crystal Hill to build their homes. More settlers arrived over the next decade, and with the establishment of the Arkansas Territory in 1819, community members lobbied to have the …

Rose Hill Cemetery

Rose Hill Cemetery is a historic cemetery located in Arkadelphia (Clark County). It was officially opened in 1876, although some graves in the cemetery date to the 1850s. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 1999. The first public cemetery in Arkadelphia was established shortly after the town was settled. It was named the Blakely Graveyard for an early name of the settlement. The graveyard was closed by the city board to future interments in 1869. In 1876, the Maddox family donated land for a new cemetery. In 1880, the Maddox Cemetery was renamed Rose Hill, although it is unclear why this change occurred. Several graves from the Blakely Graveyard were moved to …

Scott Cemetery

Scott Cemetery, established in 1920, is located in rural Lawrence County near Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County). The cemetery is representative of many small, rural African-American cemeteries in the South, although it is not associated with a nearby church. There are approximately 101 graves in the cemetery, including those of former slaves and of several leaders of the African-American community in the area. Scott Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, with local significance for its association with the ethnic heritage (burial customs) of the African-American community of Walnut Ridge, Hoxie (Lawrence County), and the surrounding portions of Lawrence County from the 1920s to the present. Scott Cemetery is one of seven African-American cemeteries within …

Searcy Confederate Monument

The Searcy Confederate Monument is a commemorative sculpture erected in 1917 at the White County Courthouse to honor local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. White County sent eight companies of infantry and cavalry troops to fight for the Confederacy, and shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, local members of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) decided it was time to raise a monument in their memory. The Reporter, a trade magazine for monument makers and dealers, included a notice in 1904 saying, “At the recent reunion of Camp Walker-McRea [sic] U.C.V., held at Searcy, Ark., a committee was appointed to co-operate with a committee of the local chapter of the U.D.C. in …

Sloan Site

The Sloan site is located on an ice age sand dune in the lowlands of Greene County. People of the Dalton culture buried their dead in ceremonial fashion here about 10,500 years ago. Dalton people were mobile foragers who made and used a distinctive suite of stone tools. These tools have been found at sites across the mid-continental United States. Their material culture that has survived consists primarily of tools made from chert—a highly resistant silica-rich stone that is abundant in the Ozark Mountains, west of the Sloan Site—and in the gravel deposits of Crowley’s Ridge, just east of the Sloan Site. The Sloan Site is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, documented cemeteries in the New World. …

St. Charles Battle Monument

The St. Charles Battle Monument, located in the center of the intersection of Arkansas Street and Broadway in St. Charles (Arkansas County), is a commemorative monument erected in 1919 in honor of the casualties of the 1862 engagement at St. Charles. On June 17, 1862, a Union flotilla steamed up the White River to bring supplies to Major General Samuel R. Curtis’s Army of the Southwest, which was threatening Little Rock (Pulaski County) from eastern Arkansas. Confederate troops had sunk the gunboat CSS Maurepas and a pair of steamboats at St. Charles to block the river and placed cannon on shore to bombard any approaching vessels. The USS Mound City led the Union force. Around 10:00 a.m., a Confederate shell …

Star City Confederate Memorial

The Star City Confederate Memorial is a commemorative sculpture erected in Star City (Lincoln County) in 1926 by the Captain J. Martin Meroney Chapter No. 1831 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to remember local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Though Lincoln County was not formed until 1871, portions of two Confederate infantry and two cavalry companies, as well as a company of Home Guards, were raised in the area that would later encompass the Reconstruction-era county. In the early twentieth century, the members of the Captain J. Martin Meroney Chapter No. 1831 of the UDC decided to emulate other chapters around Arkansas and erect a statue in memory of local Confederates. …

Sulphur Springs Cemetery

The Sulphur Springs Cemetery in Yell County, considered a historical resource, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 21, 2012, under multiple criteria, including Criterion C and Criterion D, for the designation of burial places. Among many unmarked fieldstones, the cemetery holds the remains of Judge John F. Choate, a prominent community member who served as Yell County circuit clerk and Yell County judge. The cemetery is one of the only surviving structures from the region’s days as a medicinal resort destination. In the early to mid-1800s, Sulphur Springs (Yell County) was known throughout the United States for its healing waters, which contained minerals such as white and black sulfur, soda, and chalybeate. Spas were popular …

U.S. Senator Hattie Caraway Gravesite

The first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, the first to preside over a session of the Senate, the first to chair a committee, and the first to preside over a Senate hearing was Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway of Jonesboro (Craighead County). On September 20, 2007, her Jonesboro gravesite was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Caraway was born on February 2, 1878, in Tennessee. While attending college at Dickson Normal College in Dickson, Tennessee, she met her future husband, Thaddeus Horatius Caraway of Clay County, Arkansas. They were married in 1902 and moved to Jonesboro. Thad Caraway was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1912 and the U.S. Senate in 1920. After his …

Van Buren Confederate Monument

The Van Buren Confederate Monument is a sculpture erected in 1898 in Fairview Cemetery by the Mary Lee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. It was moved to the grounds of the Crawford County Courthouse eight years later. As many as 1,000 Crawford County men fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and on March 19, 1896, the Mary Lee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy organized in Van Buren (Crawford County) with a goal of raising a monument to honor them and other Confederate soldiers who died in the area. The chapter was effective at fundraising, and in 1898 …

Vietnam War Markers and Memorials

A number of markers and memorials to Arkansans who served and lost their lives in the Vietnam War are located in communities throughout the state. Vietnam veterans are also memorialized on a number of other monuments that recognize service members from other wars. Most monuments are located at county courthouses or other public spaces. Funding for these monuments came from a variety of sources, with the placement of the monuments typically organized by local citizens and members of various veterans’ organizations. The Arkansas Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial is located on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Dedicated on March 7, 1987, by retired U.S. Army general William Westmoreland, the memorial includes a circular wall listing …

Violet Cemetery

Violet Cemetery is a historical burial site located in Osceola (Mississippi County). Situated near the heart of downtown, the cemetery is bounded on the front and south by Johnson Avenue, on the rear and north by West Semmes Avenue, on the west by Pecan Street, and on the east by private property. The cemetery’s location was originally an isolated burial ground in Mississippi County known as God’s Acre. However, as Osceola expanded from a small river town into a larger agricultural community, the cemetery became part of the Townsite Addition of Osceola. The earliest marked grave within the cemetery is from 1831, which predates the formation of Mississippi County (November 1, 1833) as well as Arkansas statehood (1836). The list of …

Wilhite Cemetery

aka: Sims Cemetery

The Sims family graveyard is the oldest known cemetery near what later became the community of Pine Ridge, then Waters (Montgomery County). It is in the woods on unmarked private property off of Arkansas Highway 88, approximately two miles east of the Montgomery–Polk County line. The cemetery has about sixty-five graves. In the twenty-first century, access is limited. The Sims and Wilhite families were among the settlers who traveled by wagon train during the mid-1800s to what is now the Ouachita National Forest. Most were southern farmers looking for wooded hills with game and fish to feed their families. Many of the Sims women married Wilhite men, and the Sims Cemetery became known as the Wilhite Cemetery, although it remained …

William H. Grey Gravesite

The William H. Grey Gravesite is the last remaining physical property associated with one of the state’s most prominent African-American Masonic, religious, and political leaders. The gravesite, which is located in Magnolia Cemetery in Helena-West Helena (Phillips County), was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 27, 2019. William Henry Grey was born free in Washington DC on December 22, 1829. By 1863, he had moved to Helena, Arkansas, and was engaged in the grocery and bakery business. Grey participated in a convention held in Little Rock (Pulaski County) by African Americans in 1865 to discuss the betterment of Black Arkansans. Having gained a reputation as an outstanding speaker at this convention, he was chosen as one …

Woolsey Farmstead Cemetery

The Woolsey Farmstead Cemetery is located in western Fayetteville (Washington County), near the Woolsey Wet Prairie Preserve. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 2020. The small family cemetery, which covers less than one acre, is in the northeastern corner of an open field that was originally part of the farmstead of the Woolsey family, who were early settlers in the area of present-day Farmington (Washington County), arriving in 1830. There is a small grove of trees within the bounds of the cemetery, which causes it to stand out from the surrounding fields. The area around the cemetery that is not cultivated fields is densely wooded. Within the wrought-iron fence, there is a large …

World War II Markers and Memorials

A number of markers and memorials to service members who served in World War II are located across Arkansas. While some of the monuments are standalone structures, others include World War II veterans alongside service members from other conflicts, including World War I and the Vietnam War. Monuments across the state also memorialize individuals, units, and ships with Arkansas connections. Two of the earliest monuments erected in the state after the war memorialize fallen men in both world wars. Dedicated in 1947 and located at the Old Scott County Courthouse in Waldron (Scott County), one such monument consists of a marble column topped with an eagle and lists the names of men lost in the wars. The next year, the …