Brother Chris Cooke, Superintendent of Cemeteries for Evansville, provided a tour of the Civil War section of Oak Hill Cemetery. Meanwhile Brothers Dennis Hutchinson and Scott Hurst dressed in uniform and discussed what it was like to be a soldier in the Civil War and what it would have been like to be in a river port and “border town” during that time.

The remains of 500 Union men, 24 Confederate soldiers, and 98 local dead are buried in three separate sections of the Oak Hill Cemetery — all victims of Civil War battles. In 1868, the city began efforts to secure designation of the Union veterans’ areas as federal property, eventually succeeding with a Congressional appropriation and recognition in 1898. Several years later, in about 1903, the Fitzhugh Lee Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument in remembrance of the 24 soldiers who died for the South. A memorial for local Union dead was added in 1909.