Sumter District Monument

To the Confederate Dead
 

The Ladies' Monumental Association of Sumter District was organized in about 1867 by the women of Sumter, South Carolina. They published a four-page newspaper known as The Fair Enterprise. Their sole purpose was to raise funds for and to promote the building of a Confederate Monument dedicated to those who lost their lives in the late war who were from Sumter District. 

The monument is located down the street from the Sumter County Museum on Washington Street, in the city of Sumter, not far from the Sumter County Museum Archives which is around the corner on Liberty Street in the old Carnegie Library building. The monument was placed in front of what was then known as Washington School. (The school buildings that were there have long since been torn down.) The one acre site was given to Sumter in 1837 to use as a public school by Colonel John Blount Miller who was a soldier during the War of 1812.This southern half of the where the momument is located was purchased from the John B. Miller estate for the sum of $200, in 1872. The upper half of the property had been purchased from the Frierson estate in 1871, for $300.

Inscribed with the names of 341 of Sumter District's Confederate dead, the cornerstone for the monument was laid on May 6, 1874. An engraving on the monument states that it was erected in the year 1876. It took until 1888 to fully complete the momument.

In 1897,the last meeting of the Ladies' Monumental Assocation was held. It was presided over by the Honorable Altamont Moses and the minutes were recorded by I.C. Strauss, secretary and treasurer. A resolution was introduced by General E.W. Moise,"Whereas, death has removed many of the original trustees of this Association, and those remaining are now growing old," that the books, papers, funds, properties, and responsibilities fo the Association be made over to the Dick Anderson Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy, which has been organized in Sumter the year before. The Ladies' Monumental Association deeded its books, papers, funds, property, and the monument to the U.D.C. In order to accept, the U.D.C. had to have a local charter, charted by the State chapter. Thus the first local Sumter U.D.C. chapter emerged as the Dick Anderson Chapter No. 75, U.D.C. In 1890, a ninety-nine year lease had been given to the Board of Education to cover a part of Monumental Square. This was sufficient for the erection of the first of the group of city schools, the Washington School building.

(east side of monument)

(south side of monument)

(north side of monument)

(west side of monument)

*Joseph Hill Long's name appears on the Confederate Dead Monument as "J. H. Long, Sr." It is assumed that "Sr." was added because someone though that the name of his son, Joseph Henry Long (killed in 1864 at Petersburg), listed as J. H. Long, Jr. had the same name as his father.

In 1951, the Dick Anderson Chapter No. 75, UDC, dedicated an eight-foot bronze tablet embedded in a granite boulder at the Sumter Cemetery on Oakland Avenue. Many soldiers who died in Sumter's Confederate hospitals during the war were buried there. Some who died at the Battle of Dingle's Mill were buried in the Sumter Cemetery also. The monument is on the gravesite of Grabriel C. Jones.(Gabriel C. Jones was born Sept 16th, 1821 and died Sept 21, 1864. He was a member of Co. G, 24th Reg. S.C.V., in the Army of the Confederate States. This is affectionately Dedicated by his bereaved widow.) There were fourty-nine stones surrounding the monument with names from the bronze tablet engraved on each of the stones. (Some are now missing.) The only stone with much more than a name is that honoring Lieutenant R.A. Painpare, a Lousiana native who was killed at Dingle's Mill on April 9th, 1865, . Painpare was a patient in a Sumter hospital when he left the hospital to assist in the defense of Dingle's Mill.He was buried in the Catholic Cemetery and the location of his gravesite is unknown.