Farmers Bridge

Located eight miles north of Rome in the Armuchee community, Farmers Bridge was the only span across Armuchee Creek between Summerville and Rome.

On May 13, 1864 Company G, Twelfth Alabama Cavalry (C.S.) was posted on the heights south of the bridge to provide warning of Federal forces advancing after the battle of Resaca. On the morning of May 15, Colonel Robert Minty’s Federal brigade, composed of three regiments and a detachment of artillery, arrived on the road just north of the bridge. An initial charge was repulsed by the dismounted troopers entrenched on the hillside, but Minty was able to pin the Confederates in place while sending a larger force both upstream and downstream at fords across the creek.

The thin Confederate line was outflanked and soon broke. Their commander, Captain William Lokey, was mortally wounded and ten of his command killed. The remainder of the company fell back to Big Dry Creek and participated in the fight at Howe’s Hill.

The ten Confederate soldiers were initially buried where they fell but shortly afterward their bodies were reinterred by a local family in their family cemetery on a hill overlooking Armuchee Creek where, through the years, their unmarked graves were gradually forgotten. In 1998 a group of researchers from N.B. Forrest Camp 469, Sons of Confederate Veterans, found their burial location and a substantial monument with plaques describing the action was dedicated in a ceremony featuring descendants of the soldiers buried here.