 Confederate Memorial State Historic Site commemorates the more than forty thousand Missouri soldiers who fought for the Stars and Bars. In the 1880's veterans, organized as the Ex-Confederate Association of Missouri, came together to relive old times and to consider the plight of the less fortunate among them. In 1889, at their encampment in Higginsville, they incorporated a Confederate Home Association to select a site and seek funding for a home for their brethren. The following year, they purchased a 360 acre farm north of Higginsville.
 Seeking a way to aid the cause of the Confederate Home, Mrs. Abner Cassidy of St. Louis invited nearly one hundred women to the Southern Hotel in January 1891 to organize the first Missouri chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy. They promoted a plan for selling tickets at ten cents a piece, each ticket representing a “brick in the Confederate Home”. The idea caught on and soon there were Daughters of the Confederacy in many Missouri communities and then in other states, leading in 1894 to the establishment of a national organization: the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Home opened in March of 1891 and the main building was completed and dedicated in 1893. The Daughters in conjunction with the Ex-Confederate association subsequently built a hospital, a chapel and several other buildings. In addition, the Daughters commissioned a handsome granite Lion of Lucerne monument for the cemetery, erected in 1906.
Most impressive today is the carefully manicured cemetery, with its more than 800 graves of veterans and widows, a solemn reminder of loyalty and pride.
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