Peach Orchard Civil War Cemetery?

This article was printed in the Lawrence Co. History book, pp. 86/87.


CIVIL WAR CEMETERY AT PEACH ORCHARD?

By Marie R. Justice

It was not the battles nor even the reason for fighting that aroused
my interest in the Civil War. I was always curious about the men who
fought in those battles and the families they left behind.
My grandmother's sister, Melvina Mullins, married young Martin
Sowards when she was seventeen. Five years later he, along with many
other Pike County men, was mustered in at a place called Peach
Orchard in Lawrence County, Kentucky, near Louisa.
The Adjutant General's report shows that Martin was mustered in
February 16, 1863. Six weeks later, March 30th, 1863 he died. He was
one of Company C, 39th Volunteer Infantry.
Aunt Matt (Melvina) and her older brother, Nelson, went down to
Louisa to see Martin, having heard that he was ill. When they got
there they were told he was already dead and buried.
Aunt Matt was a large, handsome woman (I saw her years afterward when
she was an old woman) and in my imagination I could picture her
riding along with Uncle Nelson. There was no other means of
transportation from Shelby Creek in Pike County to Lawrence County in
1863.
My grandmother lived with us until I was twelve and I was always
hearing Civil War stories. I always wondered where they buried Martin
Sowards and the other young men who died at Peach Orchard of
smallpox, fever, etc.
No one could ever tell me if there was a soldiers cemetery at Peach
Orchard or even where the camp was. I talked to several people who
had lived in the Louisa area all their lives and people who had made
a study of the Civil War, but no-one seemed to know very much about
the encampment at Peach Orchard.
I thought it would be interesting to go there and see what I could
find. The opportunity came sooner than I expected. In October my
cousin, Lavonne Moll came over from Charleston, W. Va. to visit. She
has an uncle and some cousins who live at Richardson, in the Peach
Orchard area. They have lived there all their lives.
I had read Henry Scalfs The Last Frontier and Willard Rouse Jillson's
The Big Sandy Valley. Mr. Scalf told more about mining operations
than about military encounters.
However, in the part about Garfield and Marshall's maneuvers I
read, `The enemy is now entrenched at Peach Orchard with some 4,000
men, but their commander, Garfield, and his staff have moved forward
to Sycamore Creek about 7 miles below us.
"Entrenched" sounded as if they had halted at Peach Orchard for a
time. Of those who died there, where are they buried? Was there
indeed a cemetery? Were they brought home! What happened?
I talked with my friend, Frances Sowards of Myra, Kentucky, a local
historian. She said three Sowards brothers died there and no, they
were not brought home. She too had heard the story of Aunt Matt and
how they had gone seeking her young husband and found him already
buried.
Came the day we were to go to Peach Orchard. We traveled the new four
lane, unmarked highway between Paintsville and Louisa. We turned
right at Ky 645 to go out to Richardson and a mile and half further
on we turned left on Ky 581. At Richardson we visited Lavonne's
cousin, Beatrice Childers Parks. She told of having lived at Peach
Orchard and said at the time her twins were born she lived on a small
farm located where the old Peach Orchard mines had been. Mrs. Parks
was born in 1916 some 54 years after the Civil War. She remembered an
old cemetery being in the area at the time she lived there. She said
she didn't think we would ever find it, since the houses were all
gone and the place had grown up. However when we visited another
cousin, Jay Childers, he offered to go with us.
We drove east along Ky 645 until we came to Tunnel Branch. We turned
left on Nat's Creek and passed Bear Branch. The place no longer
resembled a farming area. At one time people who had lived here.
There had been a Peach Orchard post office, a general store and
depot, as well as a school. Now there were no houses and no buildings
at all, just a rough dirt road. Reaching Bear Branch, then Tipple
Branch, Jay Childers said that the old cemetery should be here on the
hill. He remembered that it had been about a mile from the old depot.
So we took to the hill through briars, broken tree limbs, straight up
to a more level terrain. Back in the trees on the steep hillside we
began to notice a great many rocks sticking up out of the ground.
Some were embedded in the fallen leaves. Some were stuck fast at the
base of high trees; but there they were, a great many of them and
they seemed to be in row. Some fallen over. Some resembled grave
stones. None were marked.
Was this the cemetery of those who died at Peach Orchard? Were these
stones really the markers of the graves of our ancestors who
were "entrenched" there? One hundred twenty two years ago the
soldiers whose names are on the adjutants report, as having died at
Peach Orchard from pneumonia, smallpox, etc., may have been buried on
a grassy slope that is now a mass of large trees, over grown with
briers and broken tree limbs.
Back home in the Pikeville Public Library I read the Pictorial
History of Lawrence County. This book contains a picture of the
little village of Peach Orchard. This is the only place where I have
found the statement that there were two Peach Orchards no-one had
ever told me this before. While visiting at Richardson, we had been
shown a place which was called Peach Orchard near the Richardson Post
Office. There is nothing there now to indicate that there was ever a
mining operation there. It is a bare hillside, likely a pasture for
cows.
The second Peach Orchard on Nat's Creek was the location of
the "Great Western Mining and Manufacturing Company" in 1881. At this
second Peach Orchard there had been a general store, railway station,
school, etc.
Later, when this mine was no longer in operation, in the early
1900's, Will and Mintie Childers, parents of Jay Childers and
Beatrice Parks, had a small farm here. This was the reason that Jay
knew the area.
Mrs. Parks grew up, married and lived, as she said, near the old
cemetery. This was some
75 years after the Civil War, at the time her twins were born here.
She had never known it as a Civil War cemetery, but just as an old
cemetery.
I hope someone in Lawrence County will do some research and try to
find out for sure if this is indeed the place where Civil War
Soldiers are buried.

by Marie H. Justice