Editor’s note: The current controversy is not the first time the Wadsworth-Clayton Cemetery has been in the news. This Herald Gazette piece was published in December, 1997. Though some accounts and opinions have changed, the key questions that remain include the cemetery’s fate and whether or not victims of the Civil War train wreck are interred there.
By Walter Geiger
The once quiet hilltop cemetery isn’t so quiet anymore. The rattle and hum of nearby industry fills the air.
Indeed, there is little evidence that the cemetery even exists. There are neither headstones nor ornate fencing. Mostly, there is cow dung left by dozens of cows who are free to trample the burial ground as they see fit.
The Wadsworth-Clayton Cemetery does not even garner mention in the definitive 1932 History of Lamar County. But, the cemetery lives on in the hearts of a dedicated few who are determined to spare it from industrial sprawl.
Just down the hill from the graveyard lies the railroad line. About a mile south of the cemetery on the railroad line is the scene of the horrific train crash that on September 1, 1864 sent some 20 odd Confederate soldiers and, perhaps, one of their female nurses to lie in the Wadsworth-Clayton Cemetery for eternity.
In the early fall of 1864 Atlanta was under siege. Sherman’s troops were on the brink of victory in the Battle of Atlanta. General Hood, in command of the Atlanta bastion, ordered the evacuation of the city. He commandeered a passenger train pulled by the engine Dispatch, filled it with wounded from hospitals in Atlanta and ordered it south.
The train was to carry the wounded troops through Barnesville to the relative safety of hospitals in Macon. Unfortunately, in his haste, General Hood disregarded railroad schedules.
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