EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I of “The Forgotten Ones” was printed in the Sunday, April 29 edition of the Herald-Press. Copies are available at the Herald-Press front desk. Both parts will be available online at www.palestineherald.com

As noted earlier by James H. Hurst, Co. A, 10th Texas Volunteer Infantry, from his diary that the regiment crossed the Trinity River on April 30th and May 1, 1862. So did Pvt. Ben Seaton, Co. G of the 10th Texas:  “Marched 8 miles on April 30, 1862 to Bonner Ferry on the Trinity River. We had to ferry and were detained two days in getting across to the other side.  Then to Palestine on May 2, 1862 - 12 miles, a fine road and beautiful rolling country though very warm.”

Both diary entries from Pvt. Hurst and Pvt. Seaton place the 10th Texas in Palestine on May 3, 1862.  The regiment most likely camped by Gum Springs, southeast of East Hill Cemetery on Rusk Road. That would be located between present day Spring Park Lake and the cemetery off Lacy Street, formerly Rusk Road.

Confederate Service Records compiled and available at the Confederate Research Center located on the campus of Hill College, Hillsboro, Texas, reveal the following records for the soldiers listed below:

Pvt. William Landreth, Co. I, 10th Texas Infantry left sick in Palestine, Texas on May 3, 1862.  He was listed on the reports as being on sick furlough at Anderson County, Texas, but did not return to his command.  Records indicate he surrendered in Brazos County, Texas on July 22, 1865.  Date of death and place of burial is unknown.

Pvt. Martin Palmer, age 33, Co. F, 10th Texas Infantry was said to have been left sick in Palestine in an unpublished letter dated May 10, 1862 from Pvt. Erasums E. Marr, Co. F to his brother.  Further states that Col. Nelson would send Pvt. Palmer home.  He was discharged for consumption October 13, 1862.  Date of death and place of burial is unknown.

Pvt. William A. Hogue, age 25, Co. D, 10th Texas Infantry, died of disease at Palestine, Texas on May 6, 1862.

Pvt. William T. Embry, Co. K, 10th Texas Infantry, died of disease at Palestine, Texas on May 7, 1862.

Pvt. John C. Quick, Co. C, 10th Texas Infantry, died of disease at Palestine, Texas on May 7, 1862.  He had enlisted on 3 weeks prior to his death.

Pvt. R. M. Leach, Co. H, 10th Texas Infantry, died of “Typhoid Fever” at Palestine, Texas on May 10, 1862.  His father John Leach from Belton, Bell Co., TX, took possession of his knapsack and person effects from Capt. Hartgraves at the hospital in Palestine, Texas.  According to this final statement, Pvt. Leach was 17 years old and had stood 5'4” tall with blue eyes, light hair and a light complexion.

As to the long-time mystery of the nine to eleven soldiers “all buried in a row” it is almost certain they were members of the 10th Texas Infantry Regiment.  All recorded accounts of these men place them in Granbury's Brigade, consisting of as many as 12 regiments.  Of those regiments, only the 10th passed through Palestine.  The letters and diary of Pvt. Seaton and Pvt. Hurst place the 10th in Palestine on May 2nd and 3rd, 1862.  Confederate Service Records prove that Pvt. William A. Hogue, Pvt. John C. Quick, Pvt. William T. Embry and Pvt. Richard M. Leach died of disease in Palestine, Texas between May 6-10, 1862.  Other letters and Confederate records refer to sick men left in Palestine in May 1862.   It seems extremely likely that four of those graves in the old city cemetery contain Privates Hogue, Embry, Quick and Leach.

Identifying those buried in Palestine has been greatly hampered by the timeframe and lack of information.  The case is now 150 years cold and there are over 500 men of the 10th Texas whose date of death and place of burial is unknown.  The simple approach to researching this mystery was to gather the facts to the extent possible, and then follow where the facts lead.  The best hope for new information would be from descendants of some of these soldiers.  Unpublished letters and journals of these men or family histories might provide more clues to identifying the remaining soldiers in these long-ago graves.

After the regiment left those sick at Palestine, it continued east, crossing the Neches River and into Rusk.   More soldiers would be left sick there, among them Pvt. John H. McCoy, age 17, who died of typhoid fever May 12, 1862.  In a letter dated May 11, 1862, Pvt. Isaiah Harlan says that “the health of the regiment is only tolerably good.  Fifteen or twenty of the sick have been left - top four or five have died.”   After passing through Rusk, Texas on May 5, 1862, the regiment crossed the Sabine River in Panola County (near where present day US Highway 59 crosses the river).  Pvt. Harlan continues on May 12, 1862, Elysian Field, Texas - marched 12 miles today - crossed the Red River at Shreveport on May 15th and arrived in camp in Arkansas after 3 days of hard marching on the 18th of May.  By June 6, 1862, Nelson's regiment is in camp at Little Rock, Arkansas.  Pvt. Hurst recalled that the long hard march over the hills and rocks in Arkansas will be long remembered by all the boys.  Pvt. Harlan writes on June 8th “we had a good deal of sickness in camp and several deaths.  My own health is not very good, though I am able to do my duty.”  June 16, 1862, Nelson's Regiment was engaged in the battle of Devall's Bluff on the White River in Arkansas.  Pvt. James H. Hurst, Co. A died June 17, 1862 of typhoid fever.  On September 12, 1862 Colonel Allison Nelson was promoted to Brigadier General and on Oct. 8, 1862 he would die in Little Rock, Arkansas of typhoid fever.

In August of 1862, the 10th Texas was assigned to the District of Arkansas, Trans-Mississippi Department.  Pvt. Harlan in a letter dated August 8, 1862 refers again to illness in the regiment, “our sick are slowly convalescing - most of them at least.  A few have died, six out of company in July.  Twenty-five or thirty, perhaps forty in the regiment have died mostly from measles.”  He advises his brother, Alpheus not to join the army because “I am afraid he will take fever and die - sickness goes so hard for him.”  Pvt. Harlan reports that the 10th Texas numbers about 850 men now.  “One hundred or thereabout having died since we first reached Little Rock.”  Private Isaiah Harland expresses sentiments to his mother that I'm sure the boys in Palestine must have shared as well in a series of letters written home from September 28, 1862 to March 23, 1864.  Pvt. Harlan says.  “Ma, I must state that it seems to me that I never knew your worth so well or thought so much of you as I have since I have been in the army.  When home and friends and there is prospect that he will never see them again, his thoughts turn to them with an interest that those have no idea of who have not been placed in such circumstances.  I hope I will live to see you again in peace.  What a pleasure it would be to go home and see you and all those with whom I used to be familiar.  It is my sincere prayer that we may survive the war and meet at home again in happiness.  Heaven grant that it may be so.  God save me alive that I may be permitted to see you and family all again.  Remember me to all my friends that you may see.  Pray for us.  Your affectionate son, I. Harlan.”  Isaiah Harlan was killed May 27, 1864 during the battle of Pickett's Mill near New Hope, Georgia at the age of 32.  He is buried in an unknown mass grave.

By the time Nelson's 10th Texas was encamped at Little Rock, Arkansas these Texans had suffered horribly with 140 deaths and 75 discharges due to illnesses related to typhoid fever, measles, pneumonia, diarrhea and consumption.

Had the solders “all buried in a row” in the old city cemetery in Palestine survived the journey to Arkansas, their prospects would have been grim.  To remain in service for the duration of the Civil War and live to tell about it was becoming more unlikely as the war progressed.  A brief history of the 10th Texas speaks for itself in the following timeline:

• Jan. 9-11, 1863 — Battle of Arkansas Post, Forth Hindman, Arkansas

•January-April 1863 — Enlisted men were taken prisoner and sent to Camp Douglas, IL. Note:  Ernest A. Griffin, a black Chicago funeral home director, flies  the Confederate battle flag and erected at his own expense a $20,000.00 monument to the 6,000 Confederate soldiers who are buried on his  property, once the site of Union POW Camp Douglas.

• July-Nov. 1863 — Assigned to Cleburn's Division 2nd Corps, Army of the Tennessee

• Sept. 19-20,  1863 — Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia. Note:  Pvt. James D. Smith Co. H received honor for heroism

• Nov. 23-25, 1863 — Assigned to Granbury's Brigade, Cleburne's Division, 1st  Corps  Army of the Tennessee

• Feb. 23-25, 1864 — Action and combat around Tunnell Hill, Buzzard's Roost Gap and  Rocky Faced Ridge, Georgia

• May-Sept. 1864 — Atlanta Campaign

• July 18, 1864 — General John Bell Hood succeeds Joseph E. Johnston as commander of the Army of the Tennessee

• July 22, 1864 — Battle of Atlanta, Georgia

• Nov. 30, 1864 — Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Note: Major General Hiram Granbury and Major General Patrick  Cleburne were both killed in action.

• Dec. 17-28, 1864 — Retreat to the Tennessee River near Bridgeport, Alabama

• March 19-20, 1865    — Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina

• April 9, 1865 — General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia

• April 26, 1865 — General Joseph E. Johnston finally surrenders his Army of the Tennessee (including the remainder of the 10th Texas) at Bennett's House, Durham Station, North Carolina



No exact figures have been found indicating how many members of the 10th Texas Infantry surrendered in North Carolina in late April 1865. On paper a regiment consisted of approximately 1,000 men but very few regiments got to the battlefield with numbers like that. No regiment in the army, at any time after its first few weeks of existence, was ever anywhere near its full strength. With the prevalence of sickness, every regiment had a slow, steady process of attrition beginning the moment the men got into training camp and ended only with surrender.

During the summer of 1861 when Colonel Nelson organized the 10th Texas Infantry Regiment the estimated strength  was about 1,191 men including the field and staff officers. It is believed that between 76-100 officers and enlisted men were still with the unit when it laid down its arms, much less than 10 percent of its original strength.  A breakdown of statistical numbers for men who served in the 10th Texas as based on compiled Confederate Service Records, listed and researched by Scott McKay on his website reveals the following information:

• 309 died of disease

• 110 wounded, injured or disabled

• 91 killed as a result of combat or battle

• 92 captured

• 67 left sick

• 139 missing, absent or deserted

• 151 transferred to another unit/reassigned or discharged

• 76 surrendered with Army of Tennessee in North Carolina, 1865

• 21 surrendered various places in 1865

• 12 no military information or records

In a published account in the “Herald” in September of 1919 Mrs. M. A. Lewis of 204 Hoxie Street in Palestine made a plea for the erection of grave markers for both the Confederate and Union dead buried in Palestine. She left $1 with the newspaper and pleaded for others to join her in raising a fund to provide monuments for these heroes of the past.  A reply to this good woman was printed on October 7, 1919 whereas T. C. Spencer and C. A. Stern reported that some 18 to 20 years ago the John H. Reagan Camp, U.C.V., No. 44 provided suitable markers for both Confederate and Federal soldiers in the old cemetery. They used red cedar and bois d'arc boards as the most lasting material obtainable.  Mr. A. L. Bowers, foreman of the I&GN Railroad bridge department, very kindly had these markers made and Mr. John Kelly generously made the branding irons for either U.C.V. or G.A.R. for burning into the wood.  During the 1940's some of these were replaced with concrete markers, although the source of the markers is not known.

On a hot Saturday in July 2001 many people from different historical groups paid tribute to those “forgotten ones.”  Members of several camps of Sons of Confederate Veterans from the Johnson-Sayers-Nettles Camp #1012 of Fairfield, Texas and the J. M. Matt Barton Camp No. 441 of Sulphur Springs, Texas were on hand. Members of the Davis-Reagan Chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy from Anderson County, Texas were there, including long-time president Dollye Jeffus.  Members of the Anderson County Historical Commission in attendance were Bonnie Woolverton, Jimmy Odom, Newell Kane, and Gary Williams.  The reason for this gathering of historians was to replace the existing broken and crumbling concrete UCV makers and install new 230 pound marble markers for these soldiers. These impressive upright monuments have a Southern Cross above the words “Unknown Soldier CSA.”

Heading up the work crew was Ronnie Hatfield of Palestine and other members of the 12th Texas Infantry Reenactors, including well-known Anderson County historian Forrest Bradbury, Jr. Hatfield, called “Sarge,” is 1st Sgt. And oftentimes Company commander of the 12th. Most all these reenactors came from as far as 200 miles away to give their time and skill to set up and install the new markers. It was gratifying to see all of these people gathered to preserve local Civil War history.

Every time I read or study the day-to-day hardships of the average Confederate soldier, it never ceases to impress and amaze me. The likelihood of any of these men who served the Confederate State of America during 1861-1865 surviving seems to have been against all odds.  The War Between the States was especially grueling for Texans because in addition to all the other hardships, they had to travel the longest distance to get there-to the seat of war.  And for those lucky enough to survive, they had the longest journey home.  The hope, grit, and valor of our Southern ancestors is inspirational.  The fact that so many Confederate soldiers survived their war-time experience and returned home to their families and lives and helped rebuild the nation is an everlasting tribute and testament to that intangible and timeless quality known as the “Southern Spirit.”    

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Gary A. Williams is a charter member of the John H. Reagan Camp No. 2156, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Palestine, Texas. He holds the office of Historian and has served as 2nd Lt. Commander. Williams also served on the Board of the Anderson County Historical Commission for eight years and held the office of Vice-Chairman for four years.