The Confederate Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia began in 1863. Adjacent to the older Marietta City Cemetery, Marietta Confederate Cemetery is on a hill overlooking the downtown square from the south. This is the final resting place for Confederate soldiers from nearby hospitals and the battles of the Atlanta Campaign that took place around Marietta including Kolb's Farm and Kennesaw Mountain.
In 1833 the first church in Marietta was built on the site that today holds the Marietta Confederate Cemetery. In 1839 this Baptist Church moved closer to downtown, on the aptly named Church Street just north of Marietta Square. John Glover, who was Marietta's first mayor, bought the land as part of a larger parcel shortly after he arrived in 1848. Jane Glover, his wife, officially gave the land to the "Memorial Association" in 1867, but the city began using land to bury Confederate war dead four years earlier, with Glover's permission.
That year a train wreck near Emerson, Georgia, not far from Allatoona Pass brought the war home for the people of this small Georgia town. The dead were buried on the hill beneath an oak tree.
As the Marietta Operations commence the city girds for inevitable dead. By then Marietta had witnessed the carnage of battle a number of times. Confederate wounded from Chickamauga were transported through the railway station at Dalton to Marietta. A number of buildings, including the Kennesaw House, served as hospitals and the cemetery accepted its first men killed in battle.
With the launch of The Atlanta Campaign on May 4, 1864, Marietta became a major hospital town for the Confederacy and the number of dead in the Confederate Cemetery began to rise. Burials of Confederate soldiers on the site continued until July 2, 1864, when William T. Sherman took the city."
From: http://www.mariettaga.gov/departments/parks_rec/cemeteries.aspx#3 Stan