Question of the Week: 5/27-6/2/19
It’s Memorial Day, and we’ve featured quite a few posts about the occasion and its history here on the blog and our social media.
Which cemetery or burial ground is most meaningful to you to visit? Why?
It’s Memorial Day, and we’ve featured quite a few posts about the occasion and its history here on the blog and our social media.
Which cemetery or burial ground is most meaningful to you to visit? Why?
I have two favorites: Arlington National Cemetery where my wife Joanne and in-laws (Joe (WWII), Harold (WWII) and Jennie) are buried…and Hampton National Cemetery where a great (x2) grandfather is buried – Pvt Wm McClintock, Co. G. 118th PA Infantry (Corn Exchange Regiment)…he lived his final years at the Old Soldiers Home (now a VA Hospital) in Hampton, VA.
Gotta go with Gettysburg. Lincoln’s decision of it facilitated him writing the now immortal Gettysburg Address for the occasion.
That should read “Lincoln’s DEDICATION of it!”. For the umpteenth time PLEASE install an ‘edit’ function for these posts!
Barrancas National Cemetery at Pensacola is unusual in that Union soldiers (including USCT) and Confederate Soldiers are buried on the same ground, all with properly marked headstones. This gives a sense of reconciliation, and an attempt to “heal the wounds” following the bloodiest war in American History.
My answer to this question is in this post: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2018/10/10/two-terraced-cemeteries/.
Among the Civil War burial grounds I have visited, Fort Donelson and Shiloh National Cemeteries struck me with their dignified peace and tranquility. Andersonville has the densest concentration of headstones in any National Cemetery I have seen – a fact which sets that place into a class by itself and is a silent testament to the horrors of that place.
I’d also add the Normandy American Cemetery, the Manila American Cemetery, and the Langemarck German Cemetery as being the most affecting among WWI/WWII burial grounds I have visited.
Also the city burial ground in Ciechanow, Poland – where my great-grandparents Jozef and Marianna Kolakowski lie.
I visit the grave site of Captain John Lonergan for several reasons.
He was my 2nd great grandfathers brother,
St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Burlington, Vermont is not very well kept and seems mostly neglected compared to many other Vermont Cemeteries.
Captain Lonergan received the MOH for his service at Gettysburg during the Civil War.
If I did not go there, no one else would place a flag at his grave on Memorial Day.
Here is a link:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/22670/john-lonergan
Stonewall Jackson Cemetery in Winchester Virginia. The utter tragedy of Americans killing Americans, its sadness, always strikes me the most here.
Elmira NY . where the stones are as deep as Andersonville. sad to say . and of course Arlington