Church and Cemeteries...

Church's and Cemeteries of Carroll County, Mississippi

Vaiden Cemetery

 

Location: Vaiden City Cemetery, Vaiden, MS

Contributed by Dudley Rinicker.

The Battle of Shiloh (Tennessee) was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, with Confederate forces suffering more than 10,700 casualties. This number was well above the capabilities of the Confederate medical staff. In an attempt to provide necessary care for the casualties, the Confederate Army loaded them onto trains that went South to Mississippi.

The trains stopped at each town on the railroad line to see how many of the wounded could be cared for in that town. The residents of those towns opened up school buildings, other large buildings available, and even took soldiers into private homes to be cared for.

It is known that the trains stopped at Vaiden in Carroll County, and in West, Durant, Goodman and Pickens in Holmes County. A listing of those soldiers who died at Durant and were buried in Wesley Chapel Cemetery is on the Holmes County web site. Cemeteries in West, Goodman and Pickens have markers for unknown Confederate soldiers, but as yet, none have been identified.

Listed below are those known to have been buried in the Vaiden Cemetery. These soldiers had been buried in unmarked graves, with only the actual number of dead known. There had been a marker in the cemetery for a while, indicating that there were so many unknown soldiers buried in the cemetery. Later this was changed to a marker for each grave that indicated an unknown Confederate soldier was buried there. Sometime in the 1990s, someone went to Washington, spending time at the National Archives and found the names of most of those unknown Confederate dead. Now each grave has a marker with name, unit and date of death or year of birth and year of death.