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Our American Stories

The Civil War Cemetery Where Union, Confederate, and British Veterans Lie Side by Side

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6817 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, The GAR Cemetery in Miami, Oklahoma, doesn’t look like much at first. But among the weathered headstones are the stories of Union and Confederate veterans, British pilots, rodeo stars, and forgotten locals who lived big lives before fading from memory. Nancy Bro has spent years documenting them, making sure their names and the histories behind them aren’t lost.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.3

Guaranteed Human.

0:14.2

And we return to our American stories.

0:17.9

Up next, a story from Nancy Bro.

0:24.1

Nancy is the office manager of the G.A.R. Cemetery in Miami, Oklahoma, one of the earliest cemeteries in northeast Oklahoma. Many would think that

0:31.3

the cemetery would be the end of the story, but it's just merely one bookend of a much larger collection of stories from

0:39.4

unique individuals. Let's get into the story. Here's Nancy.

0:47.0

My name is Nancy Bro. I am the G.A.R. Cemetery's office manager, and I started this job in October of 2012.

0:59.1

GAR stands for Grand Army of the Republic.

1:02.8

It is an organization that was created after the Civil War,

1:07.4

and their main goal was to have a cemetery location for their comrades to have a place

1:15.7

for their soldiers and their families to be buried. Since then, the cemetery has been handed over

1:25.1

basically to the city of Miami.

1:37.7

The GAR organization, Grand Army of the Republic, was a union organization. And this cemetery is unique in the fact that we have both union and Confederate soldiers buried within this cemetery.

1:48.7

And I believe the reason for that is the fact that the city became the owners of the cemetery,

1:55.5

and we allowed anyone to be buried here. And we have over 22,000 burials here.

2:03.2

We have a gangster, a true-life gangster,

2:05.7

that run with the likes of George Machine Gunn Kelly and others.

2:10.6

We've got an actor that starred on, Dwayne Kelton is his name,

2:15.5

starred on Gunsmoke and Charlie's Angels.

2:18.8

We've got a Wild West Bronx writer, world known.

2:23.7

He went by Booker Red. He's here.

...

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