Oklahoma Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy
Located on the western edge of Cowskin Prairie at Grove, Oklahoma.

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William W. Degge and Dorothy Miller
Confederate Soldiers and Veterans of Northwest Arkansas: Benton, Washington, and Madison Counties
(Non-Fiction: War & Military - Civil War)

"I was motivated to compile the work I call “Confederate Soldiers - Veterans of Northwest Arkansas” for a number of reasons. First, of course, is a life long love of history. I thrilled at the stories I heard adults telling about the sometimes not so good “old days,” both by grandparents with their friends and relatives, and by the old men that sat around the court-house square on wire-benches that the young local wags called “Buzzard’s Roost.” This was out west and was a retirement destination for professional people from Missouri, Kansas and Texas. Like all aged “kids,” I wish I had had a recorder to have preserved all the tales and sage advice those kindly gentlemen had to offer. I also went to town as often as I could to be with my Dad’s parents, because they had a “Carnegie” library on the same block where they resided. From the age of six or seven I spent every minute I possibly could there reading every history book they had, even those that I supposedly wasn’t old enough to read. My mother always told her friends that she never had to worry where Billy was, 'if he had disappeared he was at the library.'

"Why Confederate soldiers and veterans? So many of the stories that I heard concerned the South’s struggle for independence. My mothers’ family was from Tennessee and Missouri. Several of her grandfather’s were Southern officers killed fighting for the South, with grandmother’s forced to raise large families as widows. I heard stories of Jesse James saving the family farm in Missouri from one of her relatives. The Feds put huge liens against their property to finance Federal troops to keep them in line because they were Confederate sympathizers. They said Jesse and Frank had saved a lot of people’s farms that were in jeopardy for the same reason.

"My fathers family was from Virginia and South Carolina. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, my grandfathers’ sister, “Aunt Marion,” would come out west to visit and was always bubbling over about her work with the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It seemed she was always going to or just coming from one of their conventions. They would talk a lot about the “War” and “Reconstruction.” She once gave me a $1000 Confederate War Bond the family had purchased and told me to hang on to it, 'The South was going to rise again!.'

"A few years back, my sisters stopped by and we all went on a “family genealogy” trip to Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolina’s. My interest was mostly Confederate era information and I was shocked that there wasn’t that much about the individual soldiers of the Southern armies available for someone that hasn’t much time to spend to dig for it. One of my great-grandfather’s relatives boasted that he was a charter member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and their goal was to preserve and protect the reputation of the Confederate soldier. How can you do such a thing when you don’t have them enumerated and a biography on each one available on the local level? It seemed that the SCV’s main interest was re-enactment and sitting around a campfire chewing the fat, which is very important as far as it goes, but some of the main thrust is lost if that is the main thing they do. Another reason I want to do this through a historical organization is that my children have absolutely no interest in what I am doing and the whole thing would be chucked in a dumpster if anything should happen to me.

"Dorothy Miller first became interested in old cemeteries when she was employed with the Benton County Road Department and she was detailed to take County Jail prisoners to clean and cut trees and bushes from along the county right-of ways and later to clean old abandoned cemeteries. She noticed that so many of these old graves were either unmarked or marked by a plain field stone. At that time, I was just getting into finding Confederate soldiers’ names and burial places and she would look for the soldier’s marker if he happened to be in one of the Cemeteries they were working on. She found that some had no marker and others perhaps a simple rock from the woods. She feels that any man who risks his health and life for his government is entitled to a decent marker, and when she discovered that the Veteran’s Administration will provide one at no expense to the family, it has become her cause to get these veteran’s the recognition they deserve.

"Dorothy has always loved puzzles, and when she discovered how difficult it is to find these men and link them with other information, she jumped into this project with both feet! She loves to call it her “Cold Case Files of the Civil War.” Bless her Soul!"