The Zollie Tree

The Zollie Tree. Mill Springs Battlefield. , After Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer was fatally wounded at the Battle of Mill Springs on January 19, 1862, his men placed his body under a white oak tree. In the years that followed, the tree became known as the "Zollie Tree." , Forty years passed with no effort made to remember or honor Zollicoffer or the Confederate soldiers who lay in the mass grave nearby. , A Family Tradition , In 1902, ten-year-old Dorotha Burton witnessed the lavish ceremonies held on Memorial Day for Union soldiers buried in Mill Springs National Cemetery. She realized that the Confederate soldiers buried nearby had all but been forgotten., That year, Dorotha decorated the Zollie Tree with a flower- entwined evergreen wreath and placed flowers on the mass grave. She continued decorating the Zollie Tree on Memorial Day until 1947, when disabled by arthritis. Her family continues the tradition. , Loss of an Old Friend , One June 9, 1995, a severe storm destroyed the original Zollie Tree. Arborists judged the tree, then almost ninety feet tall and fifteen feet in circumference, to be between 200 and 250 years old. This young white oak, planted by the Mill Springs Battlefield Association on Memorial Day 1996, is a seedling of the original tree. , From her mother's garden she plucked roses and made wreaths, , and each day when the Federal dead had their graves covered , with floral tributes this little girl laid . . . upon the graves of these , Confederates . . . nature's lovely offering, and hung chaplets on , Zollicoffer's Oak. , Confederate veteran Bennett H. Young, May 19, 1910., Photo captions: , Left side: Dorotha Burton and the Zollie Tree, ca. 1935. , Right side: Above, the Zollie Tree the day before the storm destroyed it. Right, the Zollie Tree on June 9, 1995.