Was My Brother in the Battle?

In 1964, or thereabouts, my parents took us out of school one day to go to Fort Fisher, North Carolina. This was before that Civil War fort was fully reconstructed, but there was enough of a museum for us to see the relics of some sad days gone by. I remember small medicine bottles and bloodletting utensils in a glass cabinet. Most of all, I remember a crude wooden cross half broken down in some bramble. Who knows why the cross was there, or if a cross from the war could have lasted a hundred years, but my brothers and I decided that we had found the grave of a fallen soldier.

After I read about the unknown soldiers whose remains were finally laid to rest after being found at the scene of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Missouri, I thought of my day at Fort Fisher and that mysterious cross where my brothers and I lay some flowers. Later I walked up the hill to the Holston Cemetery in Emory. Sometimes I like to go and sit near the Confederate dead who are buried there atop a hill from which you can see Whitetop. The horizon seems bigger up there on that hill, but it’s not big enough to include the vista of home for so many of those men.

I’ve adopted one of these men as my kin. His Brown name is common enough, as common as Mitchell, so it’s possible we’re not related. It would be easy enough for me to find out, too. A few conversations with Robert Vejnar, the archivist at Emory & Henry, and I could probably put two and two together. Sometimes, though, as with the cross at Fort Fisher, I need a mystery to remain unsolved. I prefer to think that J. D. Brown buried in Grave 171 is my long lost cousin from South Carolina who found his way to the Confederate hospital at Emory after a battle and died far from home. I like to think it’s a small but fateful world that has put the two of us together in this community so I can put flowers on his grave.

There are two soldiers there whose names and states are unknown, Numbers 179 and 180. Once upon a time, somebody had to miss them and wonder if they’d ever walk back into a house and sit down to supper. I wonder if some families will ever figure out that their kin are laid to rest here in Virginia. Emory takes care of them, though. The Holston Cemetery is the best piece of land in Emory, to my mind. It’s high and dry and offers a panoramic view of the beautiful countryside.

The college, nestled in its small valley, could have claimed this superior view, but it didn’t. It makes more sense for the town to have sacrificed its best hill to the memory of the dead. If you’ve ever visited Arlington Cemetery, or any number of national cemeteries across the nation, you’ll agree that the war dead require more than simple plots. Their families and communities deserve the best views.

At Fort Fisher, where I roamed in the bramble, the Atlantic coastline is just across the earthen hills. Later, after my visit through history, my brothers and I would wade on the edge of this ocean where ironclad battleships once raged. Since then, I have visited that site many times. Knowing that my great-great grandfather was imprisoned there may have something to do with that, but what strikes me the most is the sense of peace I get there.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 26 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.