In researching the battle of Sharpsburg re: the 8th Louisiana, I ran across a book, A DESCRIPTIVE LIST of the Burial Places of the Remains of Confederate Soldiers, Who Fell in the Battles of Antietam, South Mountain, Monocacy and Other Points in Washington and Frederick Counties, in the State of Maryland. Published 1868. On Page 26 it lists the initial site of the burial of Col. Strong - Col. Strong, In the hollow south of Dunkard church, 75 steps and 10 feet east of a walnut stump towards pike. Now recalling what I have read on this action, Strong was killed probably in the clover field just south of D. R. Miller's corn field and close to the East Woods (from Frassanito"s research of the picture of his gray horse) and George Ring rescued some of his valuables but the Louisiana Brigade evacuates the field and must leave Strong's body and a triumphant Yankee grabs one of his gauntlets from the body and that is the last said. Hood's brigade then takes the field and pushes into the corn field and this part should have been in CS possession at least for a while. If he was initially buried where stated, south of Dunkard Church, then someone or some persons had to have gone in and retrieved his body. All others in the corn field and almost everywhere else were buried either in trenches near where they fell, as this book shows, or on the grounds of the field hospitals where they died. Has anyone seen an account in the 6th La. or anyone else of someone going back for his body? He would eventually be reinterred in a grave at the end of a row of Louisianans in Rose Hill Cemetery in Hagerstown along with a few other identified Louisiana soldiers. This is a good book for anyone searching for burials from this battle and is available online. However, when you read it, it also tells the reader that when this study was done, presumably in 1867 or 68, that many of these gravesites had been plowed and the graves exposed or scattered. It gives a condition for each site. Thanks,
Wayne Cosby