A Monument to John Wilkes Booth? Unusual Landmark in Troy, Alabama

The (Former) John Wilkes Booth Monument

Today marks the anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by actor and conspirator John Wilkes Booth.

For most people of his time, North and South, the anniversary marked a sad day in American history. But for Joseph Pinkney Parker of Troy, Alabama, it was a day to be celebrated.  Parker was a police officer, teacher and Baptist church member, but he was perhaps best known as a hater of Abraham Lincoln.

Called "Pink" Parker by his friends, he would dress in his Sunday best each April 14th to celebrate the day when John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln. Residents in Troy humored or ignored his one man Booth celebration, but in 1906 Parker ignited a national controversy about their town that they could no longer ignore.  He erected a monument to John Wilkes Booth and asked for permission to put it on the courthouse lawn.

City and county leaders in Troy balked at that idea and refused, but Parker erected his monument anyway, in a prominent spot on his own property facing Madison Street in the South Alabama city.

Monument now is Parker's Headstone

The monument caught the attention of the national media and newspapers across the nation did stories on Parker's Monument to Booth.  They often got the facts wrong, claiming it had been erected by the city itself, but "Pink" Parker enjoyed all the controversy and kept his monument right where it was despite calls that he remove it.

It stayed in its spot facing Madison Street in Troy until Parker died in 1921, when his family quietly removed it and had it recarved to serve as his tombstone. It stands today in Troy's Oakwood Cemetery, but with no trace of the original inscription:  "Erected by Pink Parker in honor of John Wilks Booth for killing Old Abe Lincoln."

So far as is known, it was the only monument ever erected to John Wilkes Booth. To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/boothmonument.

The Monument to Captain Henry Wirz

Often overlooked by visitors to Andersonville National Historic Site is the nearby monument to the prison's Confederate commandant, Henry Wirz.

Although he was only a captain, Wirz was the only man ever tried, convicted and executed for war crimes during the Civil War. The Union accused him of murdering prisoners of war, despite evidence that he pleaded with his superiors for help, and a military tribunal sentenced him to death.

A native of Switzerland, Captain Wirz was a trained doctor who came to the United States and settled in Kentucky following the great European revolutions of 1848. He had a successful medical practice in Louisville before traveling south to Louisiana to join the Confederate war effort at the beginning of the war.

Wounded at Seven Pines, he was assigned to the prison service and eventually promoted to command the new prison of Camp Sumter (Andersonville), Georgia. The stockade was designed for 10,000, but Wirz eventually found himself responsible for more than 30,000 prisoners. By the summer of 1864, more than 100 were dying each day from exposure, sickness, malnutrition and other causes. There was little that Wirz or his soldiers could do to help. Pleas for additional food went up to Richmond but the Confederate government had no assistance to send. The commandant even took thousands of prisoners by train and tried to turn them over to the Union army at Jacksonville, but the Federals themselves refused to accept them.

By the time the war ended, some 13,000 men had died at Andersonville and Captain Henry Wirz was branded a villain. Placed on trial before a military tribunal, he was convicted of war crimes and hanged.

In an effort to redeem his reputation, the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908 erected a monument to Captain Wirz in Andersonville. To learn more about it and his tragic story, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/andersonville.

Former John Wilkes Booth Monument in Alabama

I recently became curious about the story of a monument to John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, that was erected in 1906 by a citizen of Troy, Alabama. It was removed in 1921, but I was surprised to find that the stone shaft actually still exists.

Joseph Pinkney "Pink" Parker commissioned the carving of the monument in hopes of placing it in front of the courthouse in Troy. A police officer, teacher, Baptist church member and Confederate veteran, Parker absolutely hated Abraham Lincoln. He had returned home from the war in 1865 to find that his family had been brutally treated by Federal soldiers and Unionists and never forgave nor forgot.

Even before he commissioned his monument to Booth, he would observe the anniversary of Lincoln's death each year by dressing in his finest clothes and holding a one man celebration.

He took his tribute to Booth to a whole new level in 1906 when he paid for the carving of a monument in his honor. Community leaders declined to allow the placement of the monument at the courthouse, so Parker erected it facing the street in his front yard in Troy. It stood there for 16 years, despite a growing national media frenzy over its existence.

To learn more and see what became of the monument, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/boothmonument.

Spring Travel Part Eleven: Grand Gulf Military Monument

Continuing our series on some of my favorite spring travel destinations in the South, we look today at Grand Gulf, Mississippi.

Visitors to the major battlefield at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi often overlook another fascinating battlefield that is located less than one hour away.

Grand Gulf Military Monument, a state park just outside of Port Gibson, Mississippi, preserves the site of the Battle of Grand Gulf and the historic town of the same name.

An important preliminary episode of the Vicksburg Campaign, the Battle of Grand Gulf took place on April 29, 1863. Hoping to bombard the heavily fortified Confederate position into submission and open the way for the landing of General Grant's troops, the Union navy attacked Grand Gulf with massive firepower. The Confederate forts replied and for hours the two sides blasted each other in one of the heaviest bombardments of the war. Union ironclads and Confederate earthen batteries covered the Mississippi River with smoke and fire.

In the end, though, the Confederate forts held. Grant was forced to abandon his plans for a landing at Grand Gulf. Instead, he marched his men across country in Louisiana and crossed downstream at Bruinsburg. The move effectively flanked the Confederate position at Grand Gulf and the Southern troops withdrew to Vicksburg a short time later.

The park today preserves a series of earthwork forts, batteries and entrenchments, along with an array of historic structures. There is also a fascinating small museum. To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/grandgulf1.

The Possum Monument - Wausau, Florida

This nicely carved stone beside State Highway 77 in Wausau, Florida is undoubtedly the Sunshine State's most unusual monument.

It is dedicated to the possum (or opossum, for our Northern friends), that creature often seen in the woods and swamps (and paved highways) of the South.

Erected in 1982, the monument pays tribute to the marsupial for its role in providing food to area residents in good times and bad. Wausau, in fact, calls itself the Possum Capital of the World and hosts a famed Fun Day and Possum Festival on the first Saturday of August each year.

To learn more about the possum monument, please visit our new Washington County, Florida pages at www.exploresouthernhistory.com/washingtoncounty and just look for the heading!