Built 1910 Opened 1910 Nearest city Nancy | NRHP Reference # 97000672 Added to NRHP 17 July 1997 | |
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Location Pulaski County, Kentucky Similar Unknown Confederate Dead Mo, Thompson and Powell Martyrs M, Confederate Soldier Monume, Captain Andrew Offutt Mo, Confederate Monument in Harrod | ||
The General Felix K. Zollicoffer Monument in Pulaski County, Kentucky, near Nancy, Kentucky, commemorates the death of Confederate Gen. Felix K. Zollicoffer, who died here at the Battle of Mill Springs. A native of nearby Tennessee, like Robert E. Lee he fought for the Confederacy out of loyalty for his state rather than having interest in the Southern cause. Zollicoffer was killed due to not realizing he was approaching Union lines instead of the Confederate line.
The monument was placed in 1910 by Bennett H. Young, who rode with Confederate general John Hunt Morgan. Each Memorial Day a young girl from Nancy named Dorotha Burton decorated a white oak tree in Zollicoffer's honor. This was the inspiration for placing the monument only a few feet away from the tree. In the 1990s the tree was destroyed by lightning, but a sapling from that tree was put in its place, and is also called the Zollicoffer tree.
The monument is an 8 feet (2.4 m) tall obelisk made of roughly hewed limestone. The description mentions not only Zollicoffer, but the other Confederates who died during the Battle of Mill Springs.
On July 17, 1997, the General Felix K. Zollicoffer Monument was one of sixty-one different monuments related to the Civil War in Kentucky placed on the National Register of Historic Places, as part of the Civil War Monuments of Kentucky Multiple Property Submission. Only a few feet away is another of the so-honored monuments: the Confederate Mass Grave Monument in Somerset. The other monument on the list in Pulaski County is the Battle of Dutton's Hill Monument north of Somerset, Kentucky.