On a dead-end road in Dean Springs, just north of Alma in Crawford County, lies one of the Stone Gardens that features some of the oldest burials in the area.
Love Cemetery, located at the end of Love Road about a half a mile east of US Highway 71, is the final resting place of 636 confirmed souls. The oldest grave in the cemetery belongs to Elizabeth Meadors Creekmore, who had relocated to the Arkansas Territory with her husband David sometime around 1845.
She died in her Dean Springs home one year after the War between the States had concluded.
But one of the most interesting inhabitants of the cemetery was just finishing up his military duty a few months before Mrs. Crabtree died. Cicero Columbus Adams, a native of the state of Georgia, was a Confederate soldier who fought in a number of the most important battles throughout the Civil War.
Adams, a member of the Second Brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah and the 8th Georgia Infantry, was born January 23, 1836 in Habersham County Georgia to the Reverend Andrew Adams and his wife Elizabeth.
Andrew, who had migrated to Georgia with his family from South Carolina at the age of six, became a pastor in the Missionary Baptist Church and moved with his uncle Nathanial into the Cherokee Nation in Northwest Georgia where he would live the rest of his life.
Cicero, the subject of our story here, was the second born of the eleven children from the union of Andrew and Elizabeth. Seven of those children were born at the estate of the Adams family near Sonora, Georgia while the last four were born in Gordon County, Georgia after Andrew had accepted a new church assignment.
The family lineage can be legitimately traced back to 1763 in Caswell County, North Carolina with the birth of his great great grandfather James Adams Sr. , who had fought in the Revolutionary War as a member of the third South Carolina Infantry.
Cicero Adams was mustered into his Confederate Civil War unit on May 12, 1861. On June 1 1861, Adams, along with thousands of the favored sons of Georgia and Alabama were gathered in and around Savannah, Georgia getting ready to join troop trains to take them to the front.
As part of the Oglethorpe Light Infantry under Captain Joseph J. West and Colonel M. Francis, Adams and his unit moved by rail on the Virginia Central Railroad from Richmond to Gordonsville and then caught another troop train that deposited them not far from Manassas, Virginia.
By June 17 the troops had marched to Camp Defiance at Stevenson's Depot near Winchester. Two days later, his unit was ordered to Manassas where the fighting was heating up.
Arriving at 11:00 p.m. on the Manassas Gap Railroad, the regiment then marched to the rear of the army between McLean and Blackburry Fords on Bull Run.
Originally the regiment was providing rear enforcement suppot it was moved to Henry House Hill and in support of a battle at Matthew Hill. After regrouping, the Georgians went back on the attack the next morning.
The regiment lost 42 men killed and 159 wounded a total of 201 of their available soldiers. Two officers were killed and to others suffered career ending wounds.
By June 22 the remnants of the 8th Georgia were stationed at Camp Victory and on July 31after time to recover they were ordered to the hastily named Camp Bartow, renamed in honor of one of the officers that had fallen during the initial attack,
located at Smith's farm two-and-a-half miles east of Manassas junction.
The Georgia troops spent the next two months in and around the Manassas area before being assigned to the Second Brigade of Major General G.W Smith's Second Army of the Potomac on September 25. Battles along the Potomac River and Centerville took their toll through the end of the year.
The Georgia troops stayed on the scout for the first half of 1862. From June 25th to July 1, the now battered regiment served in the Seven Day Battles including action at Savage Station. A skirmish at Caitlin Station on August 26 was a prelude for the second battle of Manassas which occurred August 28 - 30.
Commanders in the field for that battle included Major John Long Street and General Robert E. Lee along with Major General Thoma J. Jackson known to history as "Stonewall Jackson"
The second battle of Manassas was one of the biggest victories for the severely outmanned Confederate sources up to that point of the war.
In the two battles, almost 4,000 men were killed, an estimated 16,000 or wounded, and almost 4,000 men went unaccounted for.
But in war there's no rest for the weary. The 8th Georgia was also at the Battle of Sharpsbur, also known as Antietam. in the Maryland campaign, and the Battle of Fredericksburg later that year.
In 1863 the regiment, now commanded by Colonel John R. Towers brought 312 men to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Thirty-nine of those men were killed 108 wounded and twenty-nine more went missing in the fighting around the wheat field of Pennsylvania.
In rapid session the Georgia troops fought in the battle of Chickamauga, the siege of Chattanooga, the siege of Knoxville, the battle of Fort Sanders and at Bean's Station which closed out the year on December 14.
By April, Adams regiment returned to Virginia and was assigned to the army of Northern Virginia. In that reorganized army, Cicero Adams would have been at or near the battle of the Wilderness, the Battle of the Spotsylvania Courthouse, the Battle of Cold Harbor. and skirmishes at Deep Bottom, Cathie's Farm and Darbytown Road.
The end of the road came for the 8th Georgia Infantry regiment on April 9, 1865 when fourteen officers and 139 listing man under the command of Colonel John Towers surrendered to the command of Union General US Grant.
With little left of the or home estate, at least as it had been before the war, Cicero Adams and a number of his relations decided to try and make their way west in hopes of rebuilding their shattered lives. After a short stint in a Union military prison as the final throes of the war were wrapped up, Cicero and his family loaded up and headed north west before laying down claims in the wilds of Arkansas.
Much of what is known about Cicero and the family after they moved to Arkansas is gleaned from census records. It appears he was a farmer and one of his two children were born in Arkansas in 187, just five years after his involvement in the War.
The supposed place of his farm is listed as Alma, but it's fairly certain the family lived north of present day Alma in the area of the Lafayette community that was part of an 1868 land grant to Confederate soldiers.
His place of death on March 12, 1919 at the age of 83 was listed as Alma. He and his wife, Camellia Marcus Barton Adams are buried side by side .in row 15 of the cemetery.
According to family legend, Cicero made it through all of those Civil War battles and never received one serious wound.
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