Pvt. Hugh James Grainger, (CSA)

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/58098845/hugh-james-grainger

From Find a Grave:

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CSA, Co. K, 26th South Carolina Infantry.

Hugh James Grainger enlisted at Blanton Crossroads (now Green Sea Township), SC January 1, 1862, 34 years of age. Went on detached duty as recruiting officer. Appointed 1st Lieut. on May 19, 1862. Resigned on July 16, 1862. His unit was consolidated with the 6th Battalion, SC Infantry and became the 26th SC Infantry, Sept. 9, 1862. He re-enlisted at Blanton Crossroads, on Feb. 21, 1863, as a private in Co. K, 26th SC Inf. He was wounded in Jackson, MS on July 12, 1863, and died in Lauderdale Springs, MS on Sept. 9, 1863.

(from the notes of Jennings B. Grainger, Sr.)

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Died in Lauderdale, no further record. Until I find family records indicating he was brought home for burial in Martin/Grainger Cemetery, I will assume he was buried near the hospital (entry actually added by the UDC based on the list of casualties at the hospital). There has not been a marker placed.

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The memorial markers at Lauderdale Springs and other Confederate Cemeteries in Lauderdale County and at many other locations around the country are markers placed in memorial of the fallen. There are no remains under these markers. The actual bodies of the troops were buried in mass graves nearby. The markers are provided by the U. S. Government and placed in position on the site by various local government and benevolent organizations.

Long before the arrival of the Europeans in Mississippi, before the creation of Lauderdale County, Lauderdale Springs was a well known landmark. In the early 1850s a hotel and resort was built near the site to take advantage of the popularity of the area.

During the War for Southern Independence, the resort was converted into a hospital for the treatment of Confederate soldiers. The former two story resort then became a busy hospital and was crowded throughout the period with the sick and wounded. The railroad spur was used to ferry inbound patients, instead of resort clients, to the hospital.

In the surviving documentation of the period, the hospital was sometimes referred to as belonging to the unit to which the Chief Surgeon was assigned. It was, as in the case of Dr. Doughty, referred to as Walker's Division Hospital or, at other times, Forest's Hospital at Lauderdale Springs. The name of the location, however, has come to be the predominant identification for this hospital.

Next to the hospital was the "death house" where soldiers who could no longer be helped by the limited medical skills of the era, went to live out their final hours. Up the hill, from the death house a cemetery was established.

After the war, although the building and grounds were used by the Mississippi Baptist Convention for the Confederate Orphans' Home of Mississippi, the cemetery was gradually neglected and the property was sold. When the Winnie David Chapter Number 24 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was organized in 1896, they learned of the existence of the cemetery and its lack of care and, in 1897, they purchased the 2 acre grounds. Since that time the cemetery has been under the care and protection of that organization.

Lauderdale Springs is the burial site of more than 1,100 soldiers who died there. There are 1020 CSA and 80 Union buried on the site and, while the names of many of those interred there have survived, most of the burial sites, that have been marked, contain only the inscription "Unknown."

(Information extracted from an essay written by Bill White located here).