By Thomas Zei
When Chaplain William Earnshaw was assigned the task of creating a national cemetery on the grounds selected for the purpose, he immediately faced a daunting challenge. He was running into a massive roadblock created by thousands of years of geologic history that would make a cemetery almost impossible to accomplish in the time and budget given for the task.
Stepping back, it is hard to imagine that what is now Middle Tennessee was underwater. The shoreline of the ocean was well north of the region. Over time, the remains of ocean creatures accumulated on the seabed. Placed under pressure, the remaining fossils were changed into solid rock which was exposed as the ocean receded. The calcified rock created a vast amount of limestone found throughout Middle Tennessee and Southern Kentucky. In places where the rock interacted with water, vast caves and sinkholes occurred in the rock. This “karst” environment creates the landscape we see in the area around Murfreesboro, including the cedar glades protected in Stones River National Battlefield.
Although the battlefield has many trees and fields previously used for crops, spotted throughout the countryside are many rocks peaking through the ground. Just like icebergs, what is visible is only a small portion of what is hidden below the surface. Below a small layer of soil and decayed vegetation, lies a very large boundary of solid rock, pitted by various cracks and sinkholes draining out to the distant Stones River.
As Chaplain Earnshaw surveyed the empty cemetery grounds, he knew the rise on the grounds, that was used to position artillery units during the battle, was caused by limestone covered by a thin layer of soil. To bury a pine casket six feet down would require hours of chiseling out a pit with hand tools or using black powder explosives to shatter the rock. Both were beyond the budget and timeframe for creating the cemetery.
To bury thousands of Union soldier bodies, Earnshaw had to think literally “outside the box” or grave. If the limestone did not allow going down into the solid rock, a solution that met the time and budget was to go up. As the U.S.C.T. 111th Regiment brought the pine boxes back to the cemetery grounds, each casket was laid out on the ground in neat rows and columns within each section. Pictures at the time show thousands of boxes on the cemetery acres.
When Chaplain William Earnshaw was assigned the task of creating a national cemetery on the grounds selected for the purpose, he immediately faced a daunting challenge. He was running into a massive roadblock created by thousands of years of geologic history that would make a cemetery almost impossible to accomplish in the time and budget given for the task.
Stepping back, it is hard to imagine that what is now Middle Tennessee was underwater. The shoreline of the ocean was well north of the region. Over time, the remains of ocean creatures accumulated on the seabed. Placed under pressure, the remaining fossils were changed into solid rock which was exposed as the ocean receded. The calcified rock created a vast amount of limestone found throughout Middle Tennessee and Southern Kentucky. In places where the rock interacted with water, vast caves and sinkholes occurred in the rock. This “karst” environment creates the landscape we see in the area around Murfreesboro, including the cedar glades protected in Stones River National Battlefield.
Although the battlefield has many trees and fields previously used for crops, spotted throughout the countryside are many rocks peaking through the ground. Just like icebergs, what is visible is only a small portion of what is hidden below the surface. Below a small layer of soil and decayed vegetation, lies a very large boundary of solid rock, pitted by various cracks and sinkholes draining out to the distant Stones River.
As Chaplain Earnshaw surveyed the empty cemetery grounds, he knew the rise on the grounds, that was used to position artillery units during the battle, was caused by limestone covered by a thin layer of soil. To bury a pine casket six feet down would require hours of chiseling out a pit with hand tools or using black powder explosives to shatter the rock. Both were beyond the budget and timeframe for creating the cemetery.
To bury thousands of Union soldier bodies, Earnshaw had to think literally “outside the box” or grave. If the limestone did not allow going down into the solid rock, a solution that met the time and budget was to go up. As the U.S.C.T. 111th Regiment brought the pine boxes back to the cemetery grounds, each casket was laid out on the ground in neat rows and columns within each section. Pictures at the time show thousands of boxes on the cemetery acres.
Chaplain Earnshaw’s next challenge was to find a source of dirt to bury the boxes into makeshift graves. He was fortunate to find an area across the Nashville Pike from the Hazen’s Monument just down the road from the cemetery. He quarried the soil and clay from the area and moved the dirt by wagon to the cemetery where it was piled on top of the pine boxes. The graves certainly were not six feet down but were sufficiently deep to keep wildlife away from the deceased. The soil was sloped down each side to drain the rainfall.
Earnshaw’s correspondence does not indicate who owned the land where the dirt was taken or whether any amount was paid to the landowner. Taking the soil also eliminated the property from farm use.
The natural contours of the ridge were not evenly distributed on each side of the central plaza. If you view the cemetery from the tour road in the Cotton Field, you will notice that the right side is a more gradual slope compared to the left side. By the time the Black soldiers of the U.S.C.T were buried on the west side of Sections A and B, their graves were lower on the ridge than similarly placed graves on the east side.
When the decision was made to move the over one thousand graves from Rose Hill cemetery in Columbia, TN to Stones River National Cemetery, it led to unforeseen circumstances. The process of adding the graves to the right side of Sections H and J while also creating the Franklin Section (Section I) and the future Sections P and Q, was still feasible as they moved down the gentle slope of the ridge.
But graves were also added to the left side of Sections A and B to maintain the symmetry of Sections H and J. Since these sections were already sloped down to a lower elevation on the ridge, the workers faced a dilemma. Do they re-slope the entire left side of the cemetery to keep a proper depth of dirt or just reduce the grave depth? The latter option was chosen. A later maintenance project in the cemetery found many of the graves in this area were only a couple feet below the surface.
One additional problem was for the graves of post-Civil War veterans buried in Sections P and Q. Burying the casket was usually not a problem because the dirt or clay brought in to slope the cemetery was easy to extract. But what happens when a spouse requested burial in the same grave? Now sufficient depth for two modern day caskets had to fit in a single grave. The Park Service employees had to work their way through the bedrock to make a proper burial for the spouse.
The creation of Sections R, S and T next to the east wall of the cemetery led to further problems. The ground level was much closer to the bedrock while also dealing with the water draining off the ridge. Sections R and S in particular have large gaps which were not used for graves. It is quite possible that these gaps were caused by limestone lying just under the soil.
Burying the dead had a different meaning in Stones River National Cemetery. The method did save the U.S.C.T. 111th Regiment from the near impossible task of hammering through solid rock although they still had to quarry dirt and clay from the surrounding countryside to raise the landscape. Remember their efforts when walking through the sloping grounds of the cemetery.
Photo credit: Library of Congress
Earnshaw’s correspondence does not indicate who owned the land where the dirt was taken or whether any amount was paid to the landowner. Taking the soil also eliminated the property from farm use.
The natural contours of the ridge were not evenly distributed on each side of the central plaza. If you view the cemetery from the tour road in the Cotton Field, you will notice that the right side is a more gradual slope compared to the left side. By the time the Black soldiers of the U.S.C.T were buried on the west side of Sections A and B, their graves were lower on the ridge than similarly placed graves on the east side.
When the decision was made to move the over one thousand graves from Rose Hill cemetery in Columbia, TN to Stones River National Cemetery, it led to unforeseen circumstances. The process of adding the graves to the right side of Sections H and J while also creating the Franklin Section (Section I) and the future Sections P and Q, was still feasible as they moved down the gentle slope of the ridge.
But graves were also added to the left side of Sections A and B to maintain the symmetry of Sections H and J. Since these sections were already sloped down to a lower elevation on the ridge, the workers faced a dilemma. Do they re-slope the entire left side of the cemetery to keep a proper depth of dirt or just reduce the grave depth? The latter option was chosen. A later maintenance project in the cemetery found many of the graves in this area were only a couple feet below the surface.
One additional problem was for the graves of post-Civil War veterans buried in Sections P and Q. Burying the casket was usually not a problem because the dirt or clay brought in to slope the cemetery was easy to extract. But what happens when a spouse requested burial in the same grave? Now sufficient depth for two modern day caskets had to fit in a single grave. The Park Service employees had to work their way through the bedrock to make a proper burial for the spouse.
The creation of Sections R, S and T next to the east wall of the cemetery led to further problems. The ground level was much closer to the bedrock while also dealing with the water draining off the ridge. Sections R and S in particular have large gaps which were not used for graves. It is quite possible that these gaps were caused by limestone lying just under the soil.
Burying the dead had a different meaning in Stones River National Cemetery. The method did save the U.S.C.T. 111th Regiment from the near impossible task of hammering through solid rock although they still had to quarry dirt and clay from the surrounding countryside to raise the landscape. Remember their efforts when walking through the sloping grounds of the cemetery.
Photo credit: Library of Congress