A new set of flags flies over Soldiers’ Rest at Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Wednesday afternoon, Chandler Bonelli and Wayne McMaster raised a new Third National flag and a new Confederate Navy Jack over the headstones marking the graves of Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War. The flags replace the ones raised in August. Bonelli donated the Third National Flag, and the Old Court House Museum the Navy Jack.

“I saw how torn and faded those flags were and decided to get new flags to replace them,” Bonelli said. “I thought it would be more inviting for people who wanted to come see the cemetery.”

Soldiers Rest is a tourist attraction for the city.

“We get of people coming through here,” McMaster said.

The Third National flag was the last official flag of the Confederacy. The Navy Jack, which resembles the well-known Confederate battle flag, is a larger flag and was flown from the masts of Confederate warships .

“The flags are replaced every four months,” said McMaster, an associate member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns the property where Soldiers’ Rest sits, and the section’s curator.

Soldiers’ Rest was established by the Vicksburg Confederate Cemetery Association in 1866. McMaster said the graves were first marked with boards containing a number. He said a Union soldier involved with the National Cemetery at Fort Hill became interested and started a ledger of  “thousands of names” of Confederate dead and matched names and numbers.

Later, however, the boards disappeared from the cemetery. One story about the boards, he said, claims they were removed one winter by local residents for firewood. The stones now at the cemetery were installed in 1980.