Confederate Cemetery in Atoka, Oklahoma

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Get directions Atoka, Oklahoma, USA

Coordinates: 34.39830, -96.11640
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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Before this place was a cemetery, it was a crude "burying ground" first used by emigrants traveling on the Butterfield stagecoach road, which was in use from 1858 to 1861. The stagecoach stop was at a spring, which was called "Harkins Spring," just north of Middle Boggy River, today known as Muddy Boggy River.

During the Civil War, Confederate forces kept an outpost camp at the spring to guard the route to Boggy Depot, which lay some 15 miles to the southwest. In the winter of 1862, Colonel C.L. Dawson's 19th Arkansas Infantry was assigned to help in the building of an earthen works at Fort McCulloch. However, enroute from Forth Smith, Arkansas, to Fort McCulloch, measles swept through the regiment. Some of the men were forced to stop at the Confederate camp that had been established at Middle Boggy.

It was here many of these men died. They were buried in the small cemetery on the north side of the Middle Boggy River. Crude sandstone markers inscribed with the soldier's name, date of death, and the letters "C.S.A." were placed on the graves.

In 1998, through research at the National Archives, members of the Atoka County Historical Society identified several of the soldiers buried here and new headstones were placed alongside the old.

Research continues in the effort to identify all the soldiers who are buried here. Currently, it is not known if any of the men buried here were casualties of the bloody and one-sided Battle of Middle Boggy on February 13, 1864.