Kittrell Confederate Cemetery
Kittrell, Vance County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Confederate Cemetery. Graves of 52 soldiers individually marked, who died in the Kittrell Springs Hotel hospital 1864-65, are 1/2 mi. NE.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
During the last, desperate years of the Civil War, the Kittrell Springs Hotel was pressed into service as a Confederate hospital, and the men who died there were laid to rest nearby. Fifty-two soldiers, each grave individually marked, rest in this cemetery a short walk to the northeast. Their deaths in 1864–65 speak to the sickness and wounds that filled the war's makeshift hospitals far from the famous battlefields.
Why it matters
It is a quiet reminder that the Civil War's toll was paid as much in hospital beds as on the firing line, in resorts and hotels turned into houses of the dying.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kittrell's Springs
Kittrell, NC
In the nineteenth century, Kittrell's Springs drew visitors as a fashionable health resort and social retreat, its mineral waters promising restoration. When the Civil War came, the resort took on a graver role as the site of North Carolina's first Confederate General Hospital, operating from 1861 to 1865. The springs themselves lie a half mile west.
John White
Warrenton, NC
During the Civil War, John White served as North Carolina's commissioner sent to England to purchase ships and military supplies for the Confederate war effort, braving the risks of transatlantic wartime trade. After the war, in 1870, General Robert E. Lee visited White at his Warrenton home, which stood one block east. White's mission reflected the Confederacy's heavy reliance on European goods.
William R. 'Sawney' Webb
Person County, NC
Born near here in 1842, William R. 'Sawney' Webb served as a Confederate soldier before founding a school in 1870 that, relocated to Bell Buckle, Tennessee, became the celebrated Webb School. Late in life he served briefly as a United States Senator in 1913.
Old Breastworks
Raleigh, NC
In 1863, by order of Governor Zebulon Vance, earthen breastworks were thrown up around Raleigh to guard the capital against Federal cavalry raids during the Civil War. The fortifications ringed the city as the tide of war turned against the Confederacy. Remnants of these earthworks survive a third of a mile to the west.