Local History:  Grave of Unknown Confederate Soldier, Natchitoches Parish
Source:  Sabine Index, Many, La., Mar 19, 1965
Submitted by: Carl Dilbeck
              carlrad@earthlink.net

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The Grave of the Unknown Confederate Soldier

  The grave of the Unknown Confederate Soldier near Marthaville,
was recently given nationwide publicity in a feature article
written by Thomas K. Harvey of United Press International.

  It is not known how many newspaper, radio stations, and
television stations in the United States used the story.

  The article follows in its entirety.

  On a warm spring afternoon in 1864, shortly after the Battle of
Mansfield, a young man in ragged military garb, stopped at a
farmhouse just north of Marthaville in Northwest Louisiana. The
guns of war thundered in the distance.

  The women of the house, a mother and two daughters shelling peas
on the front porch, watched the soldier stoop to drink from a
spring about 50 yards from the house, then continue on his way
into the "Redlands", the southern end of the Red River Valley.

  Moments later, three mounted Union soldiers from a force
retreating in defeat from the Battle of Mansfield, galloped their
horses up to the house, and asked the women if they had seen a
man pass by.

  The women attempted to evade the question then, to misdirect the
Federals, but the Union soldiers spotted the young man's tracks
and spurred up the trace after him.

  Within seconds, three shots shattered the country quiet, and the
soldiers rode casually back the way they had come.

  The ragged soldier lay where he fell, his blood staining the red
earth a deeper hue.

  William Hodge Barnhill and his sons learned what had happened
when they returned from the fields later in the day. They built a
coffin, and buried the stranger near the spring.

  For nearly 100 years, the Barnhill family kept the soldier's
grave free of brush and weeds, and once a year they held a
memorial service.

  The commission passed from father to son, and ended with the
death of Robert Franklin Barnhill in 1962.

  The first two Barnhill custodians remembered the young man. The
third of the line did not, but he carried on the family tradition
with the same dedication. His custodial care began in 1905, and
continued 57 years.

  Who the young soldier was, whether he was an escaped Confederate
prisoner of war, or a Union deserter, never will be known.

  Barnhill family accounts refer to him as a Rebel, a young man -
boy - and so he is known.

  Some feel he may have been a deserter. Why else would three
soldiers shoot down an unarmed man without mercy?

  The Barnhills never thought to question why. They cared for him,
their unknown soldier, and accorded him more reverence than the
nation's Unknown Warrior in Arlington Cemetery.

  The story was told and retold on lazy summer evenings, and
around the fire on long winter nights.

  Coming generations first saw the grave from the backs of wagons,
pointed out to them as they drove by, on the way to church.

  Two years before Robert Franklin Barnhill died, the trust he no
longer could administer, because of advancing age, passed to the
community.

  Through public subscription, the old trace was cleared, and a
stone, inscribed with the names of the people who cared for the
grave, was erected. A fence was put up, and parking space was
provided for the annual memorial services that now have become a
community function.

  The grave is still there, just off a modern highway, about two
miles north of Marthaville. This spring, the fourth annual
memorial service will be held for the Young Man who died a lonely
death, and enriched the lives of thousands who followed, and will
follow him.