Confederate Cemetery

The “burying ground” was first used by emigrants traveling on the Butterfield Stage road who camped at a spring, which was later called “Harkins’ Spring,” just north of the Middle Boggy River (today known as the Muddy Boggy).

During the Civil War, Confederate forces kept an outpost camp at the spring to guard the route to Boggy Depot, which lay some 15 miles to the southwest. In the winter of 1862, Colonel C.L. Dawson’s 19th Arkansas Infantry was assigned to help in the building of an earthen works at Fort McCulloch.

Enroute from Ft. Smith, Arkansas, to Fort McCulloch measles swept through the regiment & some of the men were forced to stop at the Confederate camp at Middle Boggy. It was here that many of those men died. They were buried in the small cemetery on the north side of the Middle Boggy River. Crude sandstone markers inscribed with the soldier’s name, date of death, & the letters “C.S.A.,” were placed on the graves.

Local legend says that in 1872, when the MK&T railroad laid new tracks through the area, they crossed a portion of the old cemetery, destroying several of the Confederate graves.

In 1988, through research at the National Archives, members of the Atoka County Historical Society identified several of the soldiers buried there & new headstones were placed along side the old. Research continues in the effort to identify all of the soldiers who are buried here. It is the only designated Confederate Cemetery in the state of Oklahoma.

” … on this site lie Confederate soldiers who died in Battle – February 13, 1864

The Confederate Encampment here at Middle Muddy Boggy crossing on the Boggy Depot Road held by Lt. John Jumper’s Seminole Battalion, Capt. Adam Nail’s Company A of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Calvary, and a detachment of the Twentieth Texas Regiment was suddenly attacked by Federal forces – 3 companies of Fourteenth Kansas Cavalry, Maj. Charles Willetts in command, and a section of howitzers under Capt. Solomon Kaufman. The Confederates, though poorly armed made a firm stand in a hot fight of 30 minutes in which 47 of their men were killed and others wounded. Word of Confederate forces riding in from Boggy Depot (12 miles SW) caused a hurried retreat of the Federal troops toward Fort Gibson north” . – Oklahoma Historical Society, 1959.