GENERAL INFORMATION
To schedule a burial: Fax all discharge documentation to the National Cemetery Scheduling Office at 1-866-900-6417 and follow-up with a phone call to
1-800-535-1117.
This cemetery is supervised by the Kentucky National Cemetery Complex. Please call 859-885-5727 for further information. In the event you are unable to reach us, please call Lebanon National Cemetery at 270-692-3390, and someone will assist you.
Military Funeral Honors
Honors may be obtained through your funeral home.
If a funeral home is not involved in your arrangements, please call our office and one of our staff members will assist you in arranging for an Honor Guard Detail.
back to top
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Mill Springs National Cemetery is situated on a high, sloping knob in Pulaski County near Logan's Cross Roads in Kentucky. Located 10 miles west of Somerset on Highway 80 at Nancy, Ky., it was originally established as Logan’s Cross Roads National Cemetery in the early 18th century. Kentucky contains one of the highest concentrations of NCA-managed national cemeteries and soldier’s lots in a single state seven in all.
Kentucky lay between the Union and Confederate forces and was a state divided in spite of its effort to avoid the Civil War. The Union armies gathered 90,000 Kentucky men under their flag; the Confederacy gathered more than 40,000 men from the southern part of the state.
One of the first Kentucky battles involving a sizable number of troops occurred in Pulaski County on William H. Logan's farm. This event has several names—Beech Grove, Fishing Creek, Logan's Cross Roads—and the Battle of Mill Springs. Brig. Gen. Felix K. Zollicoffer of Nashville, Tenn., was in charge of the southeastern sector of the Confederate army. Having fortified the gaps in the Cumberland range, he moved southward and took position at Mill Springs on the south bank of the Cumberland River—five miles below the mouth of Fishing Creek. This stream crossed the roads leading from Somerset to the ferry at Mill Springs.
On Dec. 9, 1861, Zollicoffer crossed the river and made camp on the north bank at a place called Beech Grove. The hill was protected on three sides by the river and left about 1,200 yards of fighting front to defend. Gen. George B. Crittenden arrived at Mill Springs and assumed command about Jan. 1. Although he did not like Zollicoffer's position, "with an enemy in front and a river behind” he took no measures to recall him. Regardless of instructions to remain strictly defensive, Crittenden also moved to Beech Grove with a force of 6,444 soldiers. After the withdrawal of Confederate forces from neighboring Laurel County, Union Gen. Albin F. Schoepf was ordered to Somerset with about 5,000 infantry. In mid-January 1862, Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas departed Lebanon, Ky., for Somerset with his army. The combined troops of 12,000 men were to assault the Confederate forces of Crittenden and Zollicoffer at Mill Springs.
A Confederate Council of War met and decided that Thomas' forces should be defeated before they could assemble and assault Crittenden. On Jan. 19, 1862, the battle raged from morning until dark. Early in the fighting Zollicoffer was killed, which had a demoralizing effect on his troops. The Confederates were dispersed and retreated across the Cumberland River into Tennessee. Largely forgotten today, and overshadowed in its own time by battles at Shiloh and Fort Donelson, Mill Springs was the first significant Union victory of the Civil War. It proved crucial to Union control of Kentucky and the interior South and shaped later developments in the war. Mill Springs was important for another reason: it revealed the deep divisions that existed throughout the border states.
After the battle, Thomas laid out the burial grounds on a portion of the Mill Springs battlefield. The victors gathered their dead and buried them in neat rows a mile from where they fell. Within five years after the April 1865 surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Va., a vast reburial program was completed with some 300,000 Civil War dead being reinterred in 73 national cemeteries. Locally, soldiers were disinterred from Monticello, Columbia and elsewhere in the state and reinterred at Mill Springs. According to early records, 408 of the 722 graves recorded in the burial ledger were unknowns who had been disinterred from other locations and whose names were lost or weathered away from their crude "headboards."
In 1867, William H. and Nancy S. Logan donated additional land to the government for the national cemetery. He died Oct. 16, 1884, and she died March 24, 1896. Both are interred in the national cemetery with gravesites marked by private monuments.
Mill Springs National Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
back to top
NOTABLE PERSONS
Medal of Honor Recipients
Sergeant Brent Woods, (Indian Campaigns) Company B, 9th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers). Gavilan Canyon, N.M., Aug. 19, 1881 (Section A, Gravesite 930).
back to top
FLORAL/GROUNDS POLICY
Mill Springs National Cemetery is not responsible for any items left at gravesites.
Floral arrangements (up to 6 arrangements only) accompanying the casket or urn at the time of burial will be placed on the completed gravesite by cemetery staff. Natural cut flowers may be placed on graves at any time. They will be removed when they become unsightly or when it becomes necessary to facilitate cemetery operations such as mowing.
Temporary metal containers, provided by the cemetery, are available at various sites on cemetery grounds. Please limit one per gravesite. Cemetery provided floral containers are the only floral containers allowed in the cemeteries. Perma-vases are not permitted at Mill Springs National Cemetery.
Artificial flowers and/or potted plants, in unbreakable containers only (cardboard, plastic, metal), are permitted on gravesites from Oct. 10 until April 15. They will also be permitted on graves 10 days before and 10 days after Easter Sunday and Memorial Day.
Items are subject to removal on the first and third Fridays during mowing season, and depending on the added frequency of mowing more often, up to twice a week.
Depending on the growing season, artificial flowers/potted plants may have to be removed to accommodate the early mowing season, up to twice per week.
Christmas wreaths, grave blankets, and related arrangements will be permitted on graves from Dec. 1 until Jan. 20. Grave floral blankets may not be larger than two by three feet, please do not wrap them in plastic, as it destroys the turf.
Floral items and other decorations may be secured in the ground. They may not be attached to headstones or markers. Floral stands and saddles are prohibited.
Unauthorized decorations such as permanent plantings, statues, vigil lights, upright metal flag holders, and breakable objects of any kind and similar commemorative items are not permitted on the gravesites or on the monuments.
Understanding that families may desire to keep certain floral arrangements, we have in place a procedure that, upon the families written request, cemetery personnel will place the arrangement in a designated location for 30 days, after which, arrangements will be disposed.
The staff at Mill Springs National Cemetery want to thank you for your cooperation in helping us to make this cemetery a national shrine, a final resting place of Honor and Dignity in memory of the veterans of this great nation.
back to top
|
