(MURFREESBORO) Members of Scouts BSA Troop 2019 joined with cadets from Civil Air Patrol's Murfreesboro Composite Squadron Saturday (12/14/2019) in the annual Wreaths Across America ceremony at Stones River Battlefield and National Cemetery in Murfreesboro.
The two organizations, working with other groups and community volunteers, laid holiday wreaths at the headstones of more that 6,100 Union soldiers buried at the cemetery. Of these, 2,562 are unknown. Nearly 1,000 veterans who served in the century since the Civil War, and some family members are also interred there.
Wreaths Across America coordinates wreath-laying ceremonies at more than 1,600 locations across the United States, at sea and abroad. Saturday was National Wreaths Across America Day, the organization's deployment day for volunteers to lay the donated wreaths.
Troop 2019, formed in Murfreesboro on Feb. 1, was one of the nation's first all-girl units of Scouts BSA, the rebranded primary youth service of the Boy Scouts of America.
The Murfreesboro squadron is part of the Tennessee Wing of CAP, the volunteer civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force.
The Stones River Battlefield and National Cemetery form the Stones River National Battlefield, a unit of the National Park Service dedicated to preserving the battlefield and interpreting the battle and its effects on the Civil War.
Beginning on New Year's Eve of 1862 and ending on January 2, 1863, Union and Confederate forces brutally clashed near Murfreesboro, located on the Stones River. The Federal Government established a national cemetery in 1865 close to the location of some of the heaviest fighting took place.