Mrs. Colonel Smith

The Battle of Franklin is special to me.  I had quite a few relatives who experienced the terror of that ordeal.  They were with Loring's division and ended up advancing across the yard of Carnton plantation and through the McGavock cemetery, which would eventually become the final resting place of 424 Mississippians, more than from any other state.

I tried miserably to imagine what my relatives faced that evening as I stood in the yard of Carnton, exactly 150 years after them.   Instead of a battle line, though, I stood in an incredibly slow-moving single file line comprised of people who came from all over in order to participate in events commemorating the battle of Franklin.  In this case, we were all waiting to get into the mansion for a candlelight tour, followed by a walk to a nearby field adjacent to the cemetery in order to observe over 9,000 luminaries, one for each casualty of the battle.