Odd Fellows Cemetery

Odd Fellows Cemetery, Washington/Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive

Continue on to the first entrance of the Odd Fellows Cemetery at M.L. King and Winter Avenue. Turn in here, rather than at the main entrance, and stop at the edge of trees on the right.

Site 9—ODD FELLOWS CEMETERY. There are two significant Confederate grave sites here, for Colonel James Gordon and General William F. Tucker. Although neither was in the Battle of Okolona, both are important in Okolona's history. After a few steps along the maintenance way, you will see Colonel Gordon's stone on the left and General Tucker's on the right. Colonel Gordon (1853-1912) raised, armed and equipped Mississippi's first Confederate cavalry company at his own expense ($32,000). It became part of the 2nd Mississippi Cavalry. Late in the war, President Davis sent Gordon to England to try to purchase a privateer. Although Gordon could not say after the war that "I rode with Forrest," he could claim another great Mississippi distinction: he had been at Holly Springs with Van Dorn. Gordon also served in the U.S. Senate in 1909-10. Tucker, a North Carolinian who settled in Houston, Mississippi, will always be associated with the Chickasaw Guards and, later, the 41st Mississippi Infantry. During the war, he gained a fearsome reputation as a fighter, particularly at Chickamauga. At the Battle of Resaca, in 1864, he was badly wounded in his right arm, but he refused to allow the doctor to amputate. He survived the wound, only to be murdered in his own house in Okolona in 1881. The murderer remains unknown.