In Fort Payne’s Glenwood Cemetery – A Confederate Soldier Known But To God

             Some time during the pre-dawn hours of a freezing February morning in 1864, a youthful Confederate States Army soldier somehow hobbled to the spring at Fort Payne Cave and drank his fill.

            The spring flowed from the foot of Lookout Mountain from the abandoned Fort Payne Niter Cave from which saltpeter had been mined for one of the essential ingredients for making gunpowder.

            The ravages of the Civil War was taking its bloody toll on the South and the young soldier was clothed only in civilian trousers and his gray Confederate jacket, held together by two brass CSA buttons and a “Georgia peg.”  His ragged pants were held in place by a drawstring for a belt.  His left leg had been surgically removed recently above the knee, and his self-fashioned crutch lay beneath his frozen body.  His light-red beard was matted and frozen.

            The emaciated Confederate was discovered by nearby residents and buried in the “old cemetery” - the Duncan Cemetery that in 1932 was renamed Glenwood Cemetery.  Without identification, he is “known but to God.” – from The Journal, written by Editor T.H. Smith.