Winstead Hill and the McGavock Confederate Cemetery

Last weekend, our good friends Lloyd and Kay Rinehart stopped by for dinner.  Before dinner, Charlotte and I took Lloyd and Kay to see Winstead Hill and the McGavock Confederate Cemetery at Carnton Plantation.

Winstead Hill was General Hood's headquarters (Confederate) during the Battle of Franklin.

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Partially up Winstead Hill is a lookout post with a map and history of the battle.  The battle took place on November 30, 1864, and casualties topped 8,000 men.  The Confederates were unsuccessful in their bid to take back Franklin, but Federal forces withdrew to Nashville the night after the battle.

The battlefield from Winstead Hill.

There are a number of monuments on Winstead Hill commemorating the Confederate efforts that day.  Here is the detail from one of them.

After showing Lloyd and Kay Winstead Hill, we drove over to Carnton Plantation.  Carnton Plantation served as a hospital for the Confedrate forces.  When the smoke cleared, the Carnton porch held the bodies of five Confederate generals.  After the battle, the McGavock family established a Confederate graveyard on their land.

The soldiers are buried by state.  Some of these men were in their teens.  Charlotte was fascinated by the graves.

A book lists the names of the soldiers in each grave.

There are 230 Tennesseans buried in the Confederate Cemetery and 89 Texans.

Carnton Plantation from the Cemetery.

Today, while our house was being shown, Niki, the kids, Connie, and I went back to Winstead Hill to explore.  Charlotte had found a small footpath leading from the overlook when we were there with Lloyd and Kaye, so we decided to explore it.

In some areas, we may not have been on the path at all.  Connie enjoyed trotting up the trail and back,  Peter looked for acorns, and declared many rocks to be "not an acorn".  Charlotte led the way.

Connie took a moment to sit and admire her family.