Headboard

This headboard marked the temporary grave of Lieutenant Arthur W. Speight, 3rd North Carolina Regiment, Confederate States of America. Lieutenant Speight was mortally wounded during the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest one-day battle of the American Civil War. In the days following the battle, the dead were interred in hastily marked shallow graves on the battlefield and at field hospitals. When the war ended, thousands of soldiers were removed from their temporary graves and interred at more formal places of remembrance. Union soldiers were interred in Antietam National Cemetery. Confederate soldiers were buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Shepherdstown, West Virginia; Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland; or, as in the case of Lieutenant Speight, at Washington Confederate Cemetery in Hagerstown, Maryland.

Graciously Donated by Doug Bast, Boonsborough Museum of History