Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site

Description

The Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site, located about 6 miles west of Baldwyn on Highway 370, preserves the ground where the Brice family house once stood. The battlefield extended northward into southwestern Prentiss County. A memorial was erected soon after the site was designated a historic site in 1929, and a second memorial was dedicated on June 11, 2005, to Confederate Capt. John W. Morton, Chief of Artillery, and his battery. This is the only component of the National Park System designated a "battlefield site."

The modern Bethany Presbyterian Church sits on the southeast side of the crossroads; at the time of the battle, its meeting house was further south along Baldwyn Road. The Old Bethany Cemetery, which predates the Civil War, contains graves of more than 90 Confederate soldiers killed in the battle. U.S. Army soldiers killed were initially buried in common graves on the battlefield but later reinterred at Memphis National Cemetery in Tennessee. The Brices Cross Roads Visitor Center in Baldwyn is owned and operated by a public commission, and the Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Commission, Inc., formed in 1994, works with the American Battlefield Trust and government entities to preserve the greater battlefield, having purchased 1,500 acres of the original battlefield.