The Gainesville Volunteers will be honoring local Confederate soldiers buried at McNeill Cemetery today at 2 p.m.

Fourteen Confederate soldiers who are buried at the McNeill Cemetery will be honored during the Gainesville Volunteer’s annual memorial service, said Jim Huffman, member of the Gainesville Volunteers.

“We are honoring the fourteen McNeill Confederate soldiers for the same reason that we honor every veteran because they went out in defense of their homes and families and new country when called upon so to do,” Huffman said.

The memorial ceremony will have an invocation, artillery and musket salutes, performance of “Southern Taps,” a dramatic reading of “I Am Their Flag,” a poem written by Dr. Michael Bradley in 1861, and speeches about the members of Spiers family who fought in the Civil War and are buried in the McNeill Cemetery.

Huffman said the Gainesville Volunteers try to have a memorial service every April because April is Confederate Heritage Month.

The Gainesville Volunteers, the Seven Stars Artillery and the 5th Brigade Sons of Confederate Veterans Honor Guard are conducting the ceremony, Huffman said.

“The privations these soldiers endured are today unimaginable,” Huffman said about the Confederate soldiers. “They did not regularly have food, often had poor clothing, were consistently outnumbered, sometimes by 3-to-1 odds, had vastly inferior equipment, and faced an industrialized enemy with unlimited resources. Yet they fought for four years.”

The Gainesville Volunteers conduct memorial services, living histories, clean graves and cemeteries where Confederate soldiers are buried and generally educate the public about Confederate soldiers and the Civil War, Huffman said.

“It’s an honor to have them there because we do have twelve civil war veterans buried there,” said Jack Spiers with the McNeill Cemetery Association.

Spiers said the memorial is an opportunity for the organization to educate the public and also inform them of locals who fought in the Civil War.

The Confederate soldiers being honored are: Pvt. George Spiers, Co. C, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. Richard Spiers, Co. C, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. Thomas Spiers, Co. C, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. John Spiers, Co. C, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. James Spiers, Co. C, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. Orvil Spiers, Co. C, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. Sam Wallace, Co. I, 38th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. Jacob M. Rich, Co. A, 46th Mississippi Infantry; Pvt. Wm. M. Spiers, Commissary Department in Mississippi; Pvt. Joe Garner, Franklin Co. Guards, Georgia Infantry; Lt. Wm. L. Hammock, Co. E, 19th Battalion Georgia Infantry; Pvt. Wilson H. Lovless, Co. G, 4th Alabama Infantry Reserves; Pvt. Andrew Jackson Green, Co. A, 40th Alabama Infantry; Pvt. Evander D. Phillips, Co. G, 7th Battalion South Carolina Infantry. While some of the soldiers fought for part of other state’s infantries, they are all locals and all but two of the veterans are buried in the McNeill Cemetery.

Pvt. James Spiers is being honored, but is buried in an unknown grave. Pvt. Orvil Spiers is also being honored, but is buried at Soldier’s Rest Cemetery in Vicksburg.

Huffman added that Confederate veterans are considered to be American veterans by the United States government and are provided free headstones by the Veterans Administration.