By Abigail Roberts
CRAB ORCHARD – Local historian David Gambrel has spent a lot of time researching and identifying unmarked graves in Lincoln County – putting names and stories to many people who have long remained unknown.
Recently, Gambrel has identified three unidentified graves in the Crab Orchard Cemetery:
• Dr. Joseph Bell Conway
• James M. Reid
• Jacob B. Ullman
An 1871 newspaper article from The Courier Journal contributed to what Gambrel considers a major find.
According to that article, Conway and Reid, who was Conway’s patient, were killed on Oct. 14, 1862. Conway and Reid are identified in the article under numbers 19 and 20. Both were born in Tennessee and served in the Confederate Army.
The article states they were murdered by Jim Bridgewater and party near Harvey Pleasant’s in Lincoln County.
The unidentified graves only had initials, leaving Gambrel to fill in the holes in the story.
“Four years ago when my niece was graduating from Mississippi State, I had discovered that two of those unknown Confederates with initials on the stone were Dr. Joseph Conway Bell and his patient James M. Reid and they were from Shelbyville, TN,” Gambrel said.
Gambrel was able to stop at the courthouse in Shelbyville and confirm those details.
“The significance of this was, the man who killed them stood trial for it and the newspaper accounts at the time said Dr. John C. Bell,” he said. “Well, I don’t know if you’d call it a Freudian slip or not, because this Dr. Joseph Conway Bell was a distant relation to John Bell who was one of the Democrat nominees for president in 1860 and actually carried Lincoln County. So it added significance that this probably wasn’t just a random thing.”
Gambrel was also able to confirm the grave for Jacob B. Ullman who was born in Germany around 1836 and served in the Confederate Army. In 1860, Ullman was living in Jonesboro, Washington County, TN and his occupation was listed as a clerk.
“He was part of the advanced guard and was killed in action 8 miles northwest of London on Oct. 19, 1861,” Gambrel said.
Now that they have been identified, Gambrel hopes to get new markers for their grave sites.
The Crab Orchard Cemetery is home to a National Confederate Monument, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“I started doing Civil War tours of the Crab Orchard Cemetery probably 30 years ago and in 2014 we upped it by doing a self-guided tour with a QR code,” he said.
Gambrel said the QR code is no longer working but he would be willing to fix that and upgrade the tour if the public is interested.
