Gibson County Soldiers and Sailors Monument

At the corner of Broadway and North Main in Princeton, this tall granite shaft honors the people of Gibson County who went to the Civil War. It was raised by the citizens here and dedicated in nineteen twelve, before a crowd that filled the courthouse square. The monument remembers the many men who enlisted from this one rural county between eighteen sixty one and eighteen sixty five, and those who never came home.

Look closely and you will find the names of the battles they marched into carved into the stone, the great battles of the war. Soldier figures and cannons guard the base. For a farming county far from the front lines, that was a staggering share of its young men, and this shaft was the community's way of saying it would not forget them.