The Jonesboro City Council has given the go ahead for a funeral home to be constructed on property that many local Civil War historians say is sacred to the city from an historical standpoint.

Last week, the council approved a request from Weisbaden Investment, LLC, to annex and rezone an 11-acre track near Tara Boulevard off Fayetteville Road to become the site of a funeral home, despite the site being, from an historic perspective, perhaps the last piece of unspoiled Civil War battlefield remaining in Clayton County. The county is recognized as the home of Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War era novel, “Gone with the Wind.”

The funeral building location would be on what many Civil War historians familiar with Jonesboro’s history say is the site of a Civil War engagement on Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1864, that became known as the Battle of Jonesborough, resulting in a Federal victory.

Historically speaking, this was the final battle of Gen. William T. Sherman’s Atlanta campaign.

According to Civil War reenactor Eric Tedder, Jonesboro, at that time, represented the last supply line leading into Atlanta.

“Once this supply line was cut by Union forces and the area under Federal control, the fate of Atlanta was sealed and with it, for all practical purposes, the fall of the Confederacy,” he said.

According to Jonesboro Mayor Joy Day, two conditions were attached to the approval of the Weisbaden’s rezoning request.

“The council approved the request on the condition that no crematory be constructed on the property and that no other commercial building be built on it without approval of council,” she said.