Bill Heard will portray Union Gen. John T. Wilder at the 2024 Standing Stone Day festivities Oct. 12 in Monterey.
He recently portrayed Wilder as the guest speaker at a recent meeting of Capt. Champ Ferguson-Standing Stone Camp 2014, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Monterey.
Wilder, known as the “friendly carpetbagger,” was a leader throughout the Upper Cumberland and East Tennessee after the Civil War.
He opened the Imperial Hotel while living in Monterey, built and operated the first two blast furnaces in the South in Rockwood, and opened up coal-mining operations in Fentress and Overton counties.
Wilder, the coal-mining town in Fentress County, was named for him.
Wilder also served as Chattanooga mayor for a year.
He died in October 1917 and is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga.