Drawing of the Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home, first published in the April 17, 1902 copy of the Blount County News-Dispatch.
The Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home was the official home for former soldiers of the Confederate States of America by the state of Alabama, located in what is now Confederate Memorial Park in Mountain Creek in Chilton County, Alabama.
It was founded in 1901 by former Confederate veteran Jefferson Manly Falkner, a lawyer from Montgomery, Alabama. He wished to provide a home for former Confederate veterans and their wives and widows who could no longer support themselves even with pensions. (Originally, the wives had to have their Confederate husbands be alive and living at the homes, but in 1915 the rules were changed to permit widows).[1] He donated 80 acres (320,000 m2) in 1902 for the purpose of housing such residents in Mountain Creek, a summer resort area. The state government took control of the operations at the home in 1903. It was the only official home for Confederate veterans in Alabama.[2]
The home included a small hospital, a dairy barn, mess hall, and nineteen domiciles, with a then-modern sewage systems. At its height between 1914 and 1918, 91 veterans and nineteen widows of such veterans lived at the home. A total of 650–800 individuals lived at the home at one time or another, most from Alabama, but some had lived in other states during the war, and came to Alabama after the war. The last veteran in the home died in 1934. The home closed in October 1939, with the five widows left at the home moved south to a home in Montgomery, where they could receive better care.[2][3]
The Mountain Creek Baptist Church first met at the Home in 1908, spending its first two years there. Even though the church moved out, the earliest surviving church records show many of the Confederate veterans still going to the church in the 1920s.[4]
The grounds include two cemeteries, with 313 graves. A museum with relics from the war and the home is on the site.[5] Also at the site is a Methodist church and the Mountain Creek Post Office.[3] The home's cemetery rosters, insurance papers, and superintendent reports are available at the Alabama Dept. of Archives and History in Montgomery.[6]
Coordinates: 32°43′16″N 86°28′26″W / 32.721°N 86.474°W
See also[]
- Alabama in the American Civil War
- Pewee Valley Confederate Cemetery — site of the Kentucky Confederate Home, in Oldham County, Kentucky
References[]
- ↑ Development of the Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Alabama Confederate Memorial Park Autauga at War Group
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Confederate Park Alabama Historical Commission
- ↑ Mims, Scott. A new century, a new vision The Clanton Advertiser, October 11, 2008
- ↑ Confederate Memorial Park Alabama Tourism Department
- ↑ Rosenburg, R. B. (1993). Living Monuments: Confederate Soldier's Homes in the New South. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press. pp. 215. ISBN 0-8078-2109-8.
The original article can be found at Alabama Confederate Soldiers Home and the edit history here.