Patriotic organizations of Greensboro Honor North Carolina Veterans

Captain John Sloan of the Guilford Grays

“Greensboro has members in at least 34 patriotic groups. Of these the Guilford County Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (1899) was among the first to be active locally.  It grew out of two earlier organizations which had been dedicated to the same basic objectives – to honor the Confederate dead and to further the ideals for which they died.

The first group – the Ladies Memorial Association -- was formed in 1866 by local women.  They had been moved by the tragedy of wounded Confederate soldiers who had been brought to Greensboro after the Battle of Bentonville, 234 of whom, all save 4 unknown by name, had died in the homes, churches and schools of Greensboro, and had been buried in a mass grave at the edge of town. 

The [A]ssociation, under the leadership of Mrs. John A. Gretter, purchased a plot adjoining the Methodist Church cemetery on Ashe Street and honored these dead with proper burial. Many years later when the Eclectic Club, working with a Confederate committee, had laid the soldiers to final rest in Green Hill Cemetery, the Ladies Memorial Association then raised to their memory a granite monument which supports a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier. 

The second group was a temporary Ladies Memorial Association of the 1880’s which joined others in a movement to erect at Richmond, Virginia, the Battle Abbey Building, now the Confederate Memorial Institute, and a Confederate Museum.  In the latter is displayed the flag which was presented to the Guilford Grays by Edgeworth Seminary students in the solemn service of 1860. 

 North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial

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