Solemn Tribute Paid at Crown Hill As 
Confederate Soldiers Are Reburied
Source: Indianapolis Star, 10/28/1931, p. 12
Special thanks to Wayne Sharp who submitted the following article

The North and South joined in solemn tribute yesterday afternoon while 1,616 Confederate soldiers who died on Indiana soil during the civil war were buried in Crown Hill cemetery with military honors.

The dead had been removed from Greenlawn cemetery, which surrendered to an invasion of the industrial district, to one of the most beautiful sections near the main gate of Crown Hill cemetery.

The showers of the afternoon stopped temporarily when the military escort from Fort Benjamin Harrison formed at the entrance of the cemetery for the march to the graves of the fallen warriors.

Led by the Fort Harrison band and a platoon of infantrymen, a hearse bearing a coffin containing the body of a confederate soldier, draped with the stars and bars of the South, moved toward the plot of ground on a wind swept, rain soaked knoll where the bodies of his companions in conflict reposed.

Beat Muffled Martial.

A cortege composed of the Southern Club of Indianapolis, representatives of the city of Indianapolis, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the United States Army followed the hearse as the drums of the bandsmen beat a muffled martial step.

As the cortege halted at the graves and the band began a funeral hymn, raindrops drummed a repetitious requiem: "Give them eternal rest, O Lord."

While the military guard stood at attention, the body of the last confederate soldier was removed from the hearse and taken to the grave by Arthur R. Dewey, Dr. Charles Henry of Chattanooga, Tenn., B. H. Caughran, Kennedy Reese, Horace J. Gault and Brodehurst Elsey, pallbearers representing the Southern Club.

Prayer was offered by Maj. Samuel J. Miller, Chaplain of Fort Harrison, and Arthur G. Gresham of the Veterans of Foreign Wars placed on the bier a laurel magnolia wreath symbolic of the South.

"We of the Veterans of Foreign Wars are here today, as we think that it is right and just that we should pay this last tribute to our comrades who have gone beyond," Mr. Gresham said.  "As this laurel magnolia is symbolic of the south, so also it is symbolic of their faith and our faith in this our United States."

Kenna Delivers Funeral Sermon.

"The skies are overcast and the heavens seem to be weeping as we pause to pay tribute to noble, brave soldiers who fought and lost gloriously," the Rev. Alpha H. Kenna, pastor of the Roberts Park M. E. Church, a native of the South said in the funeral sermon.  "We today pledge to them who died on both sides and to our comrades who sleep in Flanders fields that we will be true to the principles and ideals for which they fought and died.  We will preserve them in times of peace and die for them in times of war."

As more than one hundred persons stood in the driving rain with bared heads, the military guard fired a salute and a bugler sounded taps.

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