Members and guests of the General T. J. Churchill Chapter #1373 United Daughters of the Confederacy organized a Confederate Memorial Day observance at Little Rock's historic Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery in Little Rock on Saturday, April 24th, 2010.
A recently published booklet on the cemetery provides a wonderful insight into the history of the some 7 cemeteries that make up Oakland-Fraternal. In May 1862 the city of Little Rock purchased 160 acres of land from Mary Starbuck and William E. Woodruff for the sum of $5,000 to establish a cemetery to bury the Confederate dead that were dying daily in Little Rock's Confederate hospitals. Some 900 Confederate soldiers were buried in a mass grave at the site of the observance. The United Daughters of the Confederacy placed a monument at the site in 1913 to honor these soldiers.
As Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery celebrates their own Sesquicentennial observance during the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial, donations are being solicited to erect an iron archway to define the entrance to the Confederate section of the cemetery. Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in April 2010.
For more information on Oakland-Fraternal Cemetery please consult their website at www.oaklandfraternal.org
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