Last Confederate Veteran

William Murphy Loudermilk was born in Cherokee County, North Carolina, on October 27, 1847, and the title on his grave rests mostly on his own word. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says no official military records have been found for the water boy, bugler and sharpshooter he described. He never drew a pension, could not gain admission to the Arkansas Confederate Home, and failed to find proof on a 1948 trip to North Carolina. He died on September 18, 1952, and his military headstone calls him Arkansas's last living Confederate veteran.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arkansas State University Museum — 4.7 mi
  A free university museum in the Dean B. Ellis Library, with a mastodon cast, an Old Town Arkansas street, Native American and Rockabilly galleries and a tinkering studio, and the hub of the university heritage sites.
• Crowley's Ridge State Park — 18 mi
  A 1933 state park on the loess hills of Crowley's Ridge, built around Benjamin Crowley's homestead spring and the stone-and-log pavilion, dam and cabins of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
• Powhatan Historic State Park — 29 mi
  A river port and county seat on the Black River whose 1888 courthouse, 1873 jail, log house and academy still stand where they were built, with a state archives branch in the same park.
• Southern Tenant Farmers Museum — 30 mi
  A museum in the 1930s dry cleaner and filling station where leaders of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union met, telling the story of cotton tenancy and the Black and white union it produced.

More markers nearby

• Troops Raised in Craighead County — 2.7 mi
• Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church — 3.6 mi
• Craighead County Court House — 3.6 mi
• Confederate Headquarters in Harrisburg — 16 mi