The Confederate Dead of Indy

From this website:


The City Cemetery and Greenlawn, where the Confederate dead of Camp Morton were buried, ceased to be used as a public cemetery in the 1860’s when the new city cemetery, Crown Hill, was opened. Some of the Confederate bodies were later exhumed and returned to relatives in the south, but most remained buried at Greenlawn. Over time, the old City Cemetery and Greenlawn became neglected and overgrown with weeds. Additionally, commercial growth was encroaching on the cemetery. In 1870, the Vandalia Railroad moved two rows of graves in Greenlawn to another section of the cemetery to make way for an engine house and additional tracks. In 1906, Colonel William Elliot was detailed by the War Department to locate the burial place of the Confederate dead. He determined that a plot about forty-five feet wide by two hundred feet long was the place where the 1870 reinterments had been made. This place was enclosed by an iron fence, and in 1912, the Federal Government erected a monument there. Industrial development continued to encroach on this small cemetery plot, so in 1928, permission was granted by the Federal Government for the Southern Club of Indianapolis in cooperation with the Board of Parks Commissioners to move the monument to Garfield Park. The names and regiments of the dead soldiers are listed on bronze tablets around the base of the large monument. The shaft bears the following inscription:

PAX

ERECTED
BY THE
UNITED STATES
TO MARK
THE BURIAL PLACE
OF 1616 CONFEDERATE
SOLDIERS AND SAILORS
WHO DIED HERE
WHILE PRISONERS
OF WAR
AND WHOSE GRAVES
CANNOT NOW BE
IDENTIFIED.”

Confederate Monument in Garfield Park - Indianapolis, IN
Near the Southern Avenue Entrance

In 1931, the War Department exhumed the remains of the Confederate prisoners buried in Greenlawn, and moved them to the northwest corner of Lot 32 at Crown Hill Cemetery. This area is also referred to as the “Confederate Mound.” In 1993, after a four-year project first initiated by two Indianapolis police officers, additional markers were installed at this site listing the names and regiments of the dead.






Confederate Burial Plot, Northwest Corner of Lot 32
Crown Hill Cemetery - Indianapolis, IN