Site of "John E. Moore," "Camp Hardee," "Cottage Number 8" and "Cripple Creek Hotel" Cottages

Site of "John E. Moore," "Camp Hardee," "Cottage Number 8" and "Cripple Creek Hotel" Cottages. The individual cottages at the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home contrasted with the large barracks found at many other Civil War veterans homes across the country during the early 1900's., All nine cottages of the Soldiers' Home had unique exteriors but identical interiors with four bedrooms housing eight "inmates" per cottage., Along this hillside, four of the ten cottages were aligned in a row running roughly east and west and facing the other five cottages to the south., To your left (east), near the top of the hill (close to where the Marbury Methodist church now stands) stood the "John E. Moore" cottage, funded and named by the Episcopal Church of North Alabama., Near this sign stood the "Camp Hardee" cottage named for the Birmingham UCV camp which funded its construction., Down the hill to your right stood "Cottage Number 8" and "Cottage Number 7" which were built by the State of Alabama to anticipate an increasing number of residents at the Confederate Soldiers' Home. "Cottage Number 7" was nicknamed the "Cripple Creek Hotel" because the veterans housed there had been "deprived of the means of locomotion" according to 'one early account. , At the bottom of the hill to your right stood the Soldiers' Home 25-bed hospital., As the veterans died, the cottages became vacant. They were dismantled after the Soldiers' Home closed in October 1939. , Photo captions: , Bottom left: Camp Hardee cottage, c. 1907. Each cottage at the Soldiers' Home housed eight veterans. These eight veterans are unidentified but they are most likely the eight men assigned to the Camp Hardee cottage. Note veteran at left wearing UCV coat and Southern Cross of Honor. , Middle: Camp Hardee cottage, c.1907 , Right: John E. Moore cottage, c. 1920 , All Photos: Confederate Memorial Park