Confederate Heritage Month! 
provided by the:
Georgia Division of The Sons of Confederate Veterans
Confederate History and Heritage Month Committee

Springhill, Tennessee - Confederate Memorial Service - April 20

The Roderick camp 2072 in Springhill, Tenn is having a rather unusual service to mark April as Confederate History Month. We are putting up yet another military headstone for another Rebel soldier who was born and raised in my home in Peytonsville. Capt. Patrick Gibson Smithson of Co D, 20th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry was born in 1838 and served gallantly in the 20th Tennessee until severly wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga in September of 1863.  After he recovered he returned home to resume teaching and then took over his dad's mercantile business until he was elected as the first Commandant of the Tennessee Soldiers Home in Hermitage. He served in that capacity until his unexpected death in 1897.

I have known about "Capt Pack", as he was called, years ago and worked to find his grave to give him a military marker. I was doing this with his grandson, Mr. Frank Smithson who was born and raised in Peytonsville but his military career took him far from home. We never could locate the old Reb's grave so we decided to put up a memorial military marker in the Smithson family cemetery near my home in 1996. Due to the encroaching development in our nieghborhood a new resident was cleaning a cemetery behind his new home and found Capt. Pack's grave and original headstone!

Mr. Frank ask that we move the military stone to Capt Pack's actual grave and I asked him if we might make it a Confederate History month event. Sadly, Mr. Frank passed away earlier this year and will miss the rededication.  However, since he was a decorated WW II veteran we decided we were going to honor him as well at our service on April 20.

We will have a speaker, music by the great Coleman Scouts, and a salute will be fired for both of these veterans from the same family who served honorably in two very different wars.