Jim Martin
From the Historian at Chickamauga-Chattanooga NMP
Tue Oct 3 10:09:21 2000


I forwarded your question to Jim Ogden at the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park. Here is his response.

October 2, 2000

Mr. Martin:

Regarding possible burial place for Wiley Smith, Co. D, 33rd Alabama/15th Mississippi Battalion Sharpshooters (Hawkin's Sharpshooters)

Some clarification may be needed here. Your message said Smith had been wounded at Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, in Feb. 1863 and that he died in a hospital in Chattanooga on May 28, 1863. I am not aware of a Feb. 1863 engagement at
Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, unless there is another Missionary Ridge in Tennesse of which I do not not know. By and large, the troops of S. A. M. Woods Brigade and Cleburne's Division spent an undisturbed Jan. Feb. and March around Tullahoma in Middle Tennessee. Wounding in combat in Feb. 1863 seems questionable. Death in Chattanooga on May 28, 1863, most likely from disease,
is certainly more possible. If he did die in a hospital in Chattanooga in May, 1863, he was most probably buried in Chattanooga. However, if he was an Alabamian as his first service in the 33rd Alabama suggests, it is possible that
the family obtained the body soon after death and moved it to a cemetery in the family's home area. Cemeteries in that area should be checked.

If he did die in Chattanooga in late May, 1863 and his body is not known to be elsewhere, he then is almost certainly buried now as an unknown in the mass grave portion of the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery. That cemetery is located
adjacent to the old Citizen's Cemetery and is today next to the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga campus between 3rd and old 5th streets.

There are an unknown number of burials in that cemetery. Some estimates put the number as high as 2,500. Regardless, all of the wartime burials are now essentially as unknowns.

The cemetery was originally located adjacent to the Tennessee River and was subject to flooding. That flooding was obliterating the grave markers. In 1866 or 1867, a list was made of the names on markers that could still be read. The first numbered marker that could be read was number 142. The first readable date of death was Feb. 1, 1863. The highest legible number and date was 887
from May 1, 1863. Hence, there is a list of roughly 750 names of men buried in the cemetery between approximately Feb. 1 and May 1, 1863. The first 141 burials are probably from dates earlier than Feb. 1. There is no indication of
how may burials there might have been that would have dated after May 1 (just for confirmation, I checked the list of roughly 750 and there is no entry for Wiley Smith or any likely variant).

The cemetery was then moved to higher ground, its present location. In the moving or soon there after, the ability to distinguish individual graves was lost. Today, even for the roughly 750 who's names are recorded, it is not possible to point to their grave specifically.

If Wiley Smith died in Chattanooga on May 28, 1863, he was probably buried in the then riverside Confederate burying ground in a grave which by 1866 or 1867 had markings which could not be read. Therefore, when the grave was moved soon
there after to the present Confederate Cemetery, it was moved as a true unknown and even how many post-May 1, 1863 burials there were to move is not known today.

I can't tell you for certain where Wiley Smith is buried, but, the above is most likely.

Jim Ogden






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