LITTLE ROCK — For 150 years, the tomb of a young Confederate soldier from Little Rock lay at the foot of a tree in Mount Holly Cemetery, unmarked and unknown to cemetery visitors.
On the 150th anniversary of his death, more than 30 Arkansans gathered Sunday to dedicate tombstones to Pvt. George Godwin Borland, 16, and 18 other Civil War soldiers, who remained without tombstones in the more than 5,000-resident cemetery.
“It should be remiss that it didn’t happen till now,” said Danny Honnoll, a Civil War historian and re-enactor from Jonesboro clad in a Confederate Army colonel’s uniform.
The unmarked graves were discovered in part of a cemetery census beginning in February, said Mount Holly Cemetery Association member Kay Tatum.
Looking to update the cemetery’s records, project leaders discovered a few unmarked graves which furthered efforts to locate the unmarked graves of war veterans.
Tatum researched those Civil War soldiers and began to pull their records, which helped her locate each of the unmarked grave sites.
“The more I researched,the more intertwined I became with their stories,” Tatum said.
The tombstones were secured through the Department of Veterans Affairs Memorial Services, Tatum said.
She’s now planning to secure headstones for veterans of the Spanish-American War and Mexican-American War.
Many spectators and participants on Sunday said they felt it their duty to remember the Civil War’s fallen, no matter the war’s cause or outcome.
Their thoughts on the ceremony’s importance were echoed by Mary Jackson, president of the Arkansas division of United Daughters of the Confederacy, who stood surrounded by Civil War regiment flags at a podium near Borland’s grave.
“Nothing is ended until it is forgotten,” said Jackson, wearing a black dress and hat.
Jackson read aloud the names of the 18 Confederate soldiers and the one Union soldier buried throughout the cemetery as a bell nearby sounded.
Among the dead were two chief surgeons, a chief engineer from the Indian Territory division, a lieutenant in the Union’s Kansas Cavalry, and young Borland - a volunteer at 15, who died in Clarksville, Texas.
Borland didn’t make it home to Little Rock, where his parents “confidently expected his return,” according to his obituary in the July 10, 1862, Arkansas Gazette.
About four months after her son’s death, Borland’s mother, Mary Isabelle Borland, died.
In an unmarked grave, she lies next to her son under a tree on Juniper Avenue North.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/25/2012