Friendship Cemetery is a
cemetery located in
Columbus, Mississippi. In 1849, the cemetery was established on 5 acres by the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows.[3] The original layout consisted of three interlocking circles, signifying the Odd Fellows emblem.[4] By 1957, Friendship Cemetery had increased in size to 35 acres, and was acquired by the City of Columbus. The cemetery was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and was designated a
Mississippi Landmark in 1989. As of 2015, the cemetery contained some 22,000 graves within an area of 70 acres and was still in use.[5] The
Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science hosts a public event every April at night in the cemetery. Students complete a research project on someone buried at the school, before dressing up and doing a performance as the person they researched.[6]
Memorial Day connection
During the
American Civil War, Columbus served as a military hospital center for the wounded, particularly after the
Battle of Shiloh.[7] More than 2,000
Confederate soldiers were interred in Friendship Cemetery,[8] along with 40 to 150
Union soldiers.[9]: 127
In 1866, four women, who became known as the
Decoration Day Ladies, organized a formal procession and ceremony to be held at Friendship Cemetery on April 26 so that a large group of Columbus women, both young and old, could place flowers atop the graves of these fallen Confederate and Union soldiers.[10] The women's tribute – treating the soldiers as equals – inspired poet
Francis Miles Finch to write the poem, The Blue and the Gray, which was published in an 1867 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.[8][11] In 1867, the remains of all Union soldiers were exhumed and reinterred in
Corinth National Cemetery.[3] Over time, these grave decoration days – honoring those who died in military service – eventually morphed into
Memorial Day.[12]
Monuments
The cemetery contains two Confederate monuments:[3]