Four Unknown Confederate Soldiers, Salisbury
This memorial is in the form of a flat arch marble tombstone embedded in a low bevel concrete base. The top half of the marker has been broken off at some point and crudely repaired.
FOUR UNKNOWN / CONFEDERATE / SOLDIERS / FOR US THEY FOUGHT / FOR US THEY DIED / GOD BLESS THEM
Old English Cemetery
March 1881
35.669590 , -80.469400
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"The Old English Cemetery." “Historic Attractions,” Visitsalisburync.com, (accessed September 16, 2015) Link
Carolina Watchman (Salisbury, NC), March 10, 1881, 3
Butler, Douglas J. North Carolina Civil War Monuments, An Illustrated History, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013), 165
“Old English Cemetery,” HMbd.org, (accessed September 16, 2015) Link
Yes
Marble
C.R. Barker led efforts of local subscription
John Buis, the creator, was a local stone carver and Confederate veteran. The four men were
killed in a skirmish near Salisbury that drove off their comrades and leaving the bodies
unidentified. Newspaper reports from the 1930’s indicate the marker is not at the actual burial
location.
The Old English cemetery is one of the oldest in Salisbury with burials beginning in 1775. It
is home to the graves of soldiers who died in 1780 at the Battle of Camden and to British soldiers who died in Salisbury during their occupation. A monument to
John W. Ellis, the North Carolina Governor at the time of Secession, is erected on his grave.
In 1842, a wooden fence was erected around the Old English Cemetery separating the burial sites of African Americans and whites for the first time. In 1855, citizens of Salisbury raised money to replace the fence with a granite wall. In 1975, the City of Salisbury assumed ownership of the cemetery and closed it to future burials.
The section of the cemetery recognized as the Oak Grove-Freedman’s Cemetery contains a
memorial dedicated in 2006 to over 150 African Americans both enslaved and free who were buried there.
The Old English Cemetery is located at the intersection of N. Church Street and Liberty Street in Salisbury, NC. A low wall built of rusticated stone blocks surrounds the cemetery which faces the rear of government buildings and the front of an old church. To the rear and sides are tree lined residential streets.
The memorial sits on the grass surrounded by other graveyards.
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