Stone Gardens: The wife of a Cherokee Confederate general rests in the Watie family plot near the Missouri border
- Dennis McCaslin
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
Polson Cemetery is a historic site in Delaware County, west of Southwest City, Missouri, near the state border. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The cemetery began as a family plot after the 1839 assassinations of Major Ridge and his son John Ridge, who were buried on family land near Honey Creek.
It later became a public cemetery, renamed for Dr. William D. Polson and related families.
The cemetery contains graves of key Cherokee figures from the Treaty of New Echota era and the Civil War. Stand Watie, Sarah Caroline Bell Watie, and family members are buried here in Plot 111.
Sarah Caroline Bell Watie was born March 11, 1820, in the Cherokee Nation East (present-day Georgia). She was the daughter of John Bell Jr., a white man from South Carolina, and Charlotte Lightfoot Adair, a Cherokee woman. The family included several siblings, such as John Adair Bell, Elizabeth Hughes Bell Candy, Nancy Bell Starr, Devereaux Jarrett Bell, Charlotte Bell Dupree, Colonel James Madison Bell, and Martha Jane Bell Duncan.
Sarah married Stand Watie on September 18, 1843 (some records say 1842), in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.
Stand Watie (born Degataga, 1806–1871) was a Cherokee leader, signer of the Treaty of New Echota, and the last Confederate general to surrender in the Civil War on June 23, 1865.
He was brigadier general of Confederate Cherokee forces.
Sarah and Stand had five children: Solon (1844–1869), Saladin Ridge (1845–1868), Eugene Cumiskey (1851–1863), Nancy Josephine "Minnehaha" (1853–1875), and Charlotte Jacqueline "Jessie" (1854–1875). All predeceased their parents.
Sarah managed family affairs during the Civil War while Stand led troops.
Sarah died February 3, 1882, in the Cherokee Nation (some sources note Vinita or Bernice area). She was originally buried in the Bell-Watie family cemetery near Bernice, which was later flooded by Grand Lake o' the Cherokees in the 1960s.
Her remains, along with those of Stand (died 1871), their daughters, and others, were relocated to Polson Cemetery. The family plot features an obelisk marker shared by Sarah and Stand, with inscriptions noting her as wife of Brig. Gen. Stand Watie.
The site is rural and open for visits.
