The Sons of Confederate Veterans firing team fires a salute during a previous Confederate Memorial Day observance. This year’s observance will be Sunday, April 23, on the Courthouse Square.

MOULTRIE, Ga.  — Members of the Moultrie-McNeill United Daughters of the Confederacy have completed plans for the annual Memorial Observance to be held at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 23, at the Confederate Monument on the Courthouse Square.

This year’s guest speaker will be Eugene “Bo” Slack, an educator for 28 years in Worth County.  Slack also serves as the camp commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ organization in Sylvester.

Members of the Moultrie and Sylvester Sons of Confederate Veterans will assist with the event supplying a military firing team and Taps.

The 77 names of Colquitt County’s known war casualties will be read and memorial wreaths will be placed at the monument. Local casualties are buried on battlefields as far away as Maryland, Pennsylvania and Northern prison camps in New York, Illinois and Delaware. One family lost six sons and another lost four.

Colquitt County was only five years old at the time of secession in 1861, with only 1,363 citizens. Three companies were raised for the war effort, sending some 226 men. The state of Georgia supplied approximately 140,000 men and April 26th was officially made Confederate Memorial Day in 1874 to honor these ancestors.