| Confederate Cemetery |
 The Confederate Cemetery
has 140 graves of soldiers mortally wounded in the Battle of Raymond, May
12, 1863. The Civil War soldiers, mostly from Tennessee and Texas, died in
private residences around the town that served as hospitals. A few
probably died of sickness while stationed in the area or died of wounds
from various local skirmishes or nearby battles such as Champion's Hill.
Those that were killed outright on the battlefield of Raymond were
reported to have been buried where they fell by Union soldiers.
In 1985, an effort was initiated by Roger Hansen of Pascagoula to identify the Confederate dead of the Battle of Raymond. A total of 109 were found, based upon the Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers in the National Archives, to have been killed or mortally wounded on the Raymond battlefield. (The Union dead at Raymond were removed after the war by the Federal Government and reinterred in the National Cemetery at Vicksburg.) This compiled list is the first accounting of the Southern heroes that died in and around Raymond as a result of the 12 May 1863 battle, but it should not be considered all inclusive due to the incompleteness of historical records. In a 1987 ceremony, the new grave markers were dedicated. Members of Stanford's Mississippi Battery, a Civil War reenactment group in authentic uniforms, fired a six-gun salute to the dead. Writer Willie Morris, great-grandson of Civil War Major George Harper who founded the Hinds County Gazette and is buried in the cemetery, participated in the ceremonies. Text of Dedication Speech The old Raymond Cemetery also has the grave of Stephen Decatur Miller (1787-1838), former Member of Congress (1817-1819), U. S. Senator (1822-1828, 1831-1833), and Governor of South Carolina (1828-1830). In March 1833, he resigned due to ill health and later engaged in cotton planting in Mississippi in 1835. He died in Raymond, March 8, 1838. Stephen D. Miller was the father of the celebrated author and diarist, Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut.
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