Hello,
December 19th, 2017 – Our 105th meeting!! We continue our seventh year.
The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Tuesday, December 19th, 2017, in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum.
Tuseday is our new meeting night. The meeting begins at 7:00 PM and is always open to the public.
Our Speaker and Topic - “Rising From the Ashes: William Holland and the Cemetery Community”
As the Civil War drew to a close, four long years of war had left their mark on the landscapes where the Battle of Stones River raged. In October 1865, a new reminder of the conflict began taking shape in the form of a national cemetery. William Holland and his comrades in the 111th United States Colored Infantry worked for a year to create Stones River National Cemetery then continued to transform the surrounding landscapes as they built new lives based on the promises of freedom purchased by the staggering sacrifices made during the Civil War.
National Cemeteries were created to bury the Union troops killed in action as well as those who died in area hospitals. Of course the famous Abraham Lincoln dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg is very well known but what of the creation of the rest, especially here in Tennessee? The Volunteer State would see them created at Fort Donelson, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga.
Join Park Ranger Jim Lewis as he explores William's story and that of the Cemetery Community and illustrates how they bind the events that unfolded near Murfreesboro nearly 155 years to our nation's continuing effort to define the nature of freedom and civil rights today. Jim has spoken to the Nashville CWRT before so we all know how good he is as a speaker.
Jim Lewis has been a Park Ranger with the National Park Service since 1991. Since 1997, he has been fixture at Stones River National Battlefield, serving as a park ranger, curator and de-facto historian there. He became the Chief of Interpretation & Cultural Resource Management in 2016.