Historically it was bone collectors who gleaned Civil War battlefields. Bone meal was & is a valuable product used for fertilizing plants.
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The gathering of bones, animal & human goes back to antiquity. (+/-) 20,000 soldiers died at Waterloo. Archeologists unearthing human remains makes the news. The telltale dimples an empty grave leaves on the soil are, on the other hand, quite common. Read more here.
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Very few human remains have been found at the site of the conflict despite thousands of soldiers being killed.
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I am not going to post them, but you can easily find post war photos of bones lying amongst shattered trees on Wilderness Battlefield. Visitors reported seeing bone piles penned up behind the inn they stayed at.
Local bone mills either purchased raw material directly or from factors. Millions of horses, mules plus hogs & cattle bones marked Civil War campsites & earthworks.
Outside of Fortress Rosecrans adjacent to Stones River National Battlefield grading for a golf course parking lot was preemptively halted when large numbers of bones were uncovered. What had been discovered was not a mass grave but rather the site of Fortress Rosecrans' knacker's yard.
So, when picking up your bone meal natural fertilizer at the garden center this fall, you will be partaking in a practice that is thousands of years old.
Wilder's Brigade earned its Lightening moniker at Beechgrove on the southern end of Hoover's Gap.
For the first time metallic internally fused cartridge ammunition was fired by 2,000 mounted infantry armed with seven shot Spencer repeating rifles. The Lightening Brigade fought off repeated attempts to drive them back into the gap. They were deployed where one of the earliest settlers cemeteries in Tennessee is.
Revolutionary War veterans rest on that ground.
Beechgrove is surrounded by what Wilder called "lumpy hills." Local farmers & hunters stumbled onto remains left where they fell during the precipitous Confederate retreat under pressure from the Tullahoma Campaign in June / July 4th 1863.
A local farmer collected the bones & interred them alongside the founding settlers. The SCV has provided modern headstones marking the graves of the unknowns.
Not far from Beechgrove a well kept grave of a different sort sits beside Cheatham Springs Road.
When he came back home after the War, General Frank Cheatham retired his well known warhorse "Old Isham" to a paddock beside the road.
Knowing Isham's fondness for apples, passersby would greet him with one. When he departed this mortal sphere, he was buried there.
Beech Grove, Hoovers Gap & old Isham are adjacent to the Beech Grove / Bell Buckle interchange on l-24 south of Murfreesboro. HWY 41 / Manchester Highway is a much more pleasant way to traverse some beautiful country.
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Bringing the