Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Farmville’s Confederate statue moved a step closer to finding a new home in the town’s Confederate Cemetery.

Town Manager Dr. Scott Davis said two potential sites for the statue have been identified in the cemetery off Jackson Avenue. The preferred site would not require any tree removal. He said the town would need to examine the preferred site with ground-penetrating radar to make sure the placing of the monument on the site would not disturb any of the deceased buried in the cemetery.

“These two locations were primarily selected based on the contour of that land,” Davis said. “It is flat, relatively, in those locations and would not need land disturbance, as much, which would add to our cost when relocating.”

Council unanimously approved the use of ground-penetrating radar on the primary site. Davis told council he expects the project to relocate and reassemble the statue on the site to cost between $50,000 and $100,000. Because the cost is above $25,000, the town will have to advertise for bids on the project.

The Confederate monument which was put in place in October of 1900, was removed June 18 of 2020 by a vote of council following unrest and the destruction or preemptive removal of many similar Confederate monuments across the county.

Farmville’s monument was one of 71 monuments removed in Virginia in 2020. More have been removed in Richmond and Charlottesville in 2021.