Officially, history doesn’t know where Colonel Solon Z. Ruff of the Eighteenth Georgia is buried.

The Eighteenth Mississippi’s Captain Gart Johnson told Confederate Veteran Magazine Ruff was shot down at the edge of the ditch along with Col. Kennon McElroy of the Thirteenth Mississippi. They were standing there remonstrating over how to get their entangled commands separated into recognizable units for the fight.

McElroy’s descendants believe he is buried at Bethel Cemetery in Knoxville, after his remains were transferred there from their initial battlefield burial. But precisely where in Bethel they don’t know.

While the academic and independent historians of the war apparently remain to be convinced, some of Ruff’s descendants believe that his remains were collected by kinfolk who lived in the surrounding hills, or as my fictional Private Lafayette Bolton said in the novel:

“Some country people had come out for the colonel’s body in a wagon. They said they were related to him and wanted to bury him proper at their place at home. One of the Bull’s staff officers, Major Goree I think it was, had talked with them and then signed a pass to allow it.”