Confederate Memorial Park in Alabama

Historic research takes you a lot of new places. Sometimes you draw an information blank but sometimes you find something you can use. Frequently you find really neat people and that’s the case at the Confederate Memorial Park near Montgomery, Alabama.

          Established as the Alabama Confederate Soldiers’ Home in 1901, the Home

housed Confederate veterans no longer able to physically or financially care for themselves. The campus eventually grew to include 22 buildings, among them a 25-bed hospital, and a water and sewage system. The facility was limited to 100 patients, including wives or widows of veterans. The population peaked at 104 inmates (the patients were termed inmates in those days) between 1914 and 1918.

          The last patients (today’s term), five Confederate widows, were moved from the Park in 1939, five years after the final Civil War veteran residing at the Home passed away. The Home was shuttered in ’39. The Park was created in the 1960s.

          The sprawling Park is now home to a museum, a research library, two cemeteries and plenty of picnic areas. There are markers that denote what was in each location when the former Confederate soldiers resided there.

The two cemeteries are the final resting place for 313 Confederate veterans and widows.

          Headstones make excellent research tools. They are a great way to confirm an individual’s year of death, which can help confirm identification, and Confederate markers also provide the name of the military unit the deceased served in. You have to cross-check to be sure you have the right soldier, but grave markers are generally solid clues.



Covered picnic areas dot the landscape.



The Park’s grounds are wonderfully lush. They are immaculate. It is peaceful there and it is easy to imagine the Civil War veterans spending their time in solitude. You can still feel their presence.

When you imagine the former Confeds spending their final years at the home, there is a tendency to visualize them in black and white because the images we have of those men were produced before color film was used.

          There are photographs on the Park’s museum walls (and in the Park’s literature) of the patients with their children and grandchildren during visits. In that regard, the Park was similar to hospitals and senior care facilities we have today.

          The staff at the Park is friendly and helpful. There is a lot of knowledge available. It is a great opportunity for a researcher.

          Even if you just like walking in pretty surroundings the park is a great place to visit.

 

          Thanks for reading.