Though Vicksburg is best known for its Civil War history, at least five soldiers from a much-earlier conflict – the war for American independence – have their final resting places here.

In September, Dr. Ian Brown of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama, may attempt to unearth a grave marker of one of the Revolution’s veterans.

&#8220Assuming it’s OK, I’m planning on bringing a group down to do the work,” said Brown.

The grave of the Rev. James Gwin is on the south side of Cedar Hill Cemetery near the third gate.

He was interred in a crypt that lies on a steep hill under inches of dirt and grass accumulated during the past 166 years. The middle of the stone is cracked, and some of the letters have become illegible.

Brown, whose previous expeditions have centered on Native American and pioneer settlements in Warren County, wants to retrieve, document and preserve Gwin’s marker.

The deed for the Gwin family plot was discovered at the Old Court House Museum by former curator and local historian Gordon Cotton.

According to research by Cotton, Gwin was a teenager in North Carolina when he joined the army of the fledgling nation. He later moved from Tennessee to Mississippi, where he became the father of California’s first full-time senator, William McKendree Gwin.

He became a leader in the Methodist church and, in 1840, when he was 71, was listed as a minister in Vicksburg. He died the next year.

His second son, Samuel Gwin, was appointed to work as a U.S. marshal for President Andrew Jackson.

The idea of reclaiming Gwin’s crypt came up about six weeks ago, Brown said, when he and students from the University of Alabama were on an archaeological dig at the Glass site in south Warren County along Pace’s Bayou.

&#8220Something could be done there,” Brown said. &#8220We’ve done things like that before.”

The reason it has taken so long to organize a plan for the unearthing is a lack of interest, said City Sexton Venable Moore Jr. And cemetery employees must leave the gravestones as they are, he said, even if they are broken or overgrown.

&#8220We don’t have the machinery to do it,” Moore said. &#8220And, if we break something, we could get sued.”

In order for any work to occur at Cedar Hill lots, which are sold to individuals, permission must be granted from family members or the company that made a marker.

In Gwin’s case, that might be impossible – so, perhaps, other routes to achieve permission might be pursued.

Of the four other Revolutionary War veterans known to be buried in Warren County, two have known grave sites.

One is David Greenleaf, who is buried at Redbone Cemetery. According to research by Cotton, Greenleaf joined the American Revolution at age 12 while living in Boston. After the war ended, he moved to South Carolina, then began a trip by flatboat, possibly with a church group, to Spanish Mississippi. The group later founded Salem Church in Jefferson County.

Greenleaf, born in 1762 and dead by 1819, was known for his cotton gin. Two years after Eli Whitney invented the machine, Greenleaf mastered the craft of manufacturing them. He soon improved on the Whitney model and sold them throughout the area. In 1799, he built a public cotton gin that formed the boundary between Jefferson and Adams counties. He also invented a screw press for packaging cotton.

The second, Capt. Ben Pettit is buried at Old Hopewell Cemetery. He first began the life of a soldier in 1775, while fighting the Cherokee Indians in Kentucky.

After the Revolutionary War, Greenleaf and his family moved to Missouri. A son, William McDowell Pettit, later moved to Warrenton, the county seat of Warren County.

While living in the area, William McDowell Pettit helped rebuild Hopewell Methodist Church. While visiting his son in Warrenton in 1827, the senior Pettit died.

The graves of two other Revolutionary War soldiers, James Mason and David McClellan, have not been located. Not much has been discovered about them, other than they both lived in Warrenton in 1820, although neither was born in Mississippi.