Talking Spirits Tour this Weekend!

Civil War Heroes Resurrected at Forest Hill Cemetery
1 Speedway Road; Madison, WI
Public tours: Sunday, October 4, 2009 – Noon to 4 p.m.
$5/adult, $2/child, Tours leave every 15 minutes
(Allow two hours for the tour, and wear comfortable shoes)

Six influential people from Civil War times will be featured during the Wisconsin Veterans Museum’s 11th annual Talking Spirits Tour. More than 1,000 people attend this award-winning event annually. Guides lead informative discussions of the cemetery’s rich history and gravestone art in between the vignettes. This year’s theme is “A New Birth of Freedom,” and focuses on the generation that embodied Abraham Lincoln’s resolve in the face of immense sacrifice.

Professional actors in period dress portray each of the Civil War-era citizens buried at the cemetery. Characters in this year’s tour include: Stephen Vaughn Shipman, a thrice wounded Union cavalry officer who went on to design the rotunda and dome of the second Capitol building in Madison; cavalryman John Coleridge Pradt, who lost an eye after being shot and left for dead when his unit was surprised by Confederate guerillas; John Wayles Jefferson, a heroic union officer and likely grandson of President Thomas Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings; Madison schoolteacher and nurse Emilie C. Quiner; Bascom B. Clarke, a young refugee from Arkansas brought north after being orphaned; and George Washington Spears, a confederate prisoner-of-war who was shot and killed in an altercation with a Union guard at Camp Randall.

Click HERE for more infomation, or on the "Forest Hill" tag below for previous entries about the event on this blog.