Jonathan Scott debunked the mystery of a Confederate soldier supposedly buried behind Winterville Methodist Church at a Historic Oglethorpe meeting at the Oglethorpe County Library on Monday.
About 40 people, including members of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, listened as Scott, Winterville’s cultural heritage director, provided evidence to refute that John Schroeder’s body isn’t in one of the five graves behind the church.
“The common lore is that John Schroeder enlisted in company F of the Louisiana Militia, and in 1864, he made his way to Winterville as a wounded soldier aboard a train that was taking soldiers from the Battle of Atlanta to Union Point, where there was a hospital,” Scott said.
The mystery surrounding Schroeder began in a letter that Lovett Pearce Winter, a member of one of the founding families of Winterville, wrote in 1903, claiming that the grave belonged to a Confederate soldier named John Schroeder.
The grave was also referenced several times in The Oglethorpe Echo’s weekly reports.
“It’s an ongoing project we’re doing in Winterville where we’re transcribing all these weekly reports,” Scott said.
Scott has been piecing together Schroeder’s past, tracing him through census data and other historical records to prove that the body in the grave in Winterville is not Schroeder, and never has been.
“This big convoluted story isn’t really based on anything besides one man’s story,” Scott said. “However, the four additional headstones are interesting because there are graves there, and it is not a spot of random land.”
Another story told to Scott states that the five graves belong to slaves who died in the 1840s constructing the Georgia Railroad, a theory that is possible based on railroad records stating that slaves were used to build it.
“Now, this cannot be proven that these are the five bodies, but I guarantee you it is a line of research that we are following up on,” Scott said.
Scott states his research proves that not only is Schroeder not buried in Winterville, but that he never stepped foot in Georgia during the Civil War.
“And there’s no evidence that those graves are in any way related to the Civil War,” Scott said.
Not only is Schroeder not buried behind the church, but records show that he died fighting for the Union, changing allegiances after he was captured.
Charlie Snelling, commander of The Sons of the Confederate Veterans, said the group has tried to have the graves moved from behind the church to the Winterville Cemetery.
“All the documentation and permits are ready, and the church wants the graves gone because they are in the way,” Snelling said. “But we’re not going to move the graves if what we’ve learned and new evidence here is something different than what was known before and actually factual.”
Scott is still researching trying to find who is in the graves, hoping to find the truth behind them.
“When we memorialize Winterville’s association with the Confederacy, it’s best we focus on the facts and not the fiction and the stories,” Scott said.