Marietta CSA Hospital Sites Tour

The above video is by no means everything Brad said.  It is just bits and pieces of what he said, and might have even  been taken out of context.

I went on a walking tour of downtown Marietta Saturday.  It was put on by the Marietta Museum of History.  It was not just a walking tour, I pretty much know myself around there, it was a tour to point out Confederate hospital sites about around the downtown area almost 150 years ago.

Brad Quinin

The tour was given by Civil War researcher and writer Brad Quinin.  It was enjoyable seeing him get carried away with a subject he knows much about and wants to share it.  I wish I could retain all he told us - the names I forgot as soon as he told us, the names  went in one ear and out the other.  I do not retain names very well.

The facts and the incidents were very impressive.   Brad had plenty of stories and quoted parts of many letters of people who were there.... he has did his research frontwards and backwards and might even talk about it in his sleep.

The three churches on Church Street served as hospitals when he wounded men arrived from Chickamauga, Also the Mason Temple, where the First National Bank Building is , the Kennesaw House,  The Georgia Military Academy, and other buildings.  Of course, other buildings outside of the downtown area also.  For instance I know Noonday Baptist Church about seven miles north of town was a hospital for the wounded.

Brad told us of a unique  revolving system that supplied them with help:  When a person first arrived he would get the best treatment and surgery they could give him.  When they got better, to the convalescent stage, they did light duty, and as the got even better they helped out with medical jobs - they became nurses, and they carried that know-how back to the battlefield with them.

Brad told us of several mixed up and swapping of bodies and cemetery markers which became too confusing for me to follow, but it was interesting.   

He mentioned that Atlanta had a small stockade of Yankee soldiers in one of the corners of Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.  I thought to myself, "Ahah!  So that is why James Andrews  (Andrews Raiders) was hung  very near Oakland."

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Amy Reed

Marietta Museum of History curator Amy Reed was on the tour to give Brad a helping hand and to help herd the fifteen of us in the same direction.

It was a great educational tour.

As I mentioned there were 15 of us.  Two of the fifteen were Chief of Marietta Police Dan Flynn and his lovely wife.  The Chief is a very nice guy.  Amy introduced us and told him that my father was also once Chief of the Marietta Police.  I told him it was in the late 40s and early 50s.  He threw in that was before he was born.  He is a very nice guy.  He told me he was Chief of the Savannah Police before coming to Marietta, which once he told me, I remember reading that, or Anna reading it to me, and before that he was with the Miami Police.  I didn't know that.

He said something to the effect that normally he is in different attire, which I took him to mean his chief of police's uniform.  I said, "Today you are undercover."