After discovering his great grandfather, James Jefferson Mott, served in General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and participated in the Confederates’ surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of Potomac at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, Charles Mott of Laurel wanted to pay tribute.

    Mott was one of six relatives of former Confederate Army veterans to participate in a Confederate Memorial Day service Monday on the lawn of the Lauderdale County Courthouse in Meridian. Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia are the only three states in the U.S. that celebrates the last Monday in April as Confederate Memorial Day.

    For Mott, a member of the Jones County Rosin Heels 227 Sons of Confederate Veterans out of Laurel, the annual memorial service is an important reminder of the South’s heritage.

    “Once I found out that my great, grandfather, James Jefferson Mott, served in the 13th Mississippi, Company K of the Pettus Guard, I’ve wanted to do this in his honor,” Mott said. “He fought in a number of battles and was there when General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. After the surrender, he walked back to Kemper County, Mississippi. It took him two months.”

    That perseverance was the subject of the service conducted by DeKalb pastor Chris Gully.

    “We’ve all heard the phrase, ‘The South Will Rise Again,'” Gully said. “This is not a political statement, but one throughout history of our overcoming and persevering.”

    Elliott Poole and his brother Knox Poole from Alabama make Mississippi and Alabama’s Confederate Memorial Day a weekend affair. Sunday they participated in a memorial service at Lauderdale Springs near Lauderdale where 1,020 Confederate troops and 80 Union troops are buried.

    “The vast majority of them are unknown,” Knox Poole said.

    Elliott Poole and Becky Tomerlin, placed the memorial wreath on the Lauderdale County Courthouse lawn after Mott’s Rosin Heels’ made its three-gun salute. Tomerlin represented the Winnie Davis 24 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was one two chapters of the UDC in Meridian with the other being the Robert E. Lee 2561.

    “While we’re the oldest Winnie Davis chapter in the state, we do things together with the Robert E. Lee chapter,” Tomerlin said. “We’ve been doing this for the last 20 years.”

    For Elliott Poole, the reason for the remembrance is simple.

    “These are our ancestors,” he said. “They fought with honor and we continue to honor them.”

    Only nine of the 11 original Confederate states celebrate a Confederate Memorial Day with a state holiday. Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee will celebrate its memorial on June 3 which is the date of the Confederacy’s lone president, Jefferson Davis’ birthday. North Carolina and South Carolina celebrate the holiday on May 10 in honor of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson who was killed on that day during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Florida celebrates April 26, while Texas has a Confederate Heroes Day on Jan. 19. Virginia and Arkansas celebrate memorials but no longer have a state holiday.

    Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia celebrate the last Monday in April in conjunction with the April 26, 1865 surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate Army to the Union’s William Tecumseh Sherman at Bennett Place in Durham, N.C.

    According to the Associated Press, the roots of Confederate Memorial Day began with ceremonies immediately after the war. Various ladies’ memorial associations across the South in 1865 and 1866 worked to move bodies of dead soldiers from mass battlefield graves to proper burials in cemeteries.