Our National Cemeteries: From the Archives

As our series on National Cemeteries continues, I want to reach back into our archives for a moment and share a couple posts about a pair of cemeteries well worth visiting.

In 2011, I posted about Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, New York, which is just a couple hours to the east of where I teach at St. Bonaventure University. Elmira was the site of “Hellmira,” which my colleague Derek Maxfield correctly describes as “the most notorious Union POW camp.” Dead Confederates from the camp were buried adjacent to the city’s Woodlawn Cemetery, and the site eventually became Woodlawn National cemetery, still open to burials for members of all branches of the military. Read more here.

In 2019, I posted about another of my favorite national cemeteries, Ball’s Bluff National Cemetery just outside of Leesburg, Virginia. The half-acre park is the third-smallest national cemetery, final resting place for 54 soldiers killed during the October 21, 1861, battle of Ball’s Bluff. Read more here.

I’ve also had unexpected national cemetery experiences at Fort Rosecrans in San Diego, California (read here), Andersonville, Georgie (read here), and Vicksburg, Mississippi (read here).

And, of course, living in Fredericksburg, I always enjoy the opportunity to visit the annual Memorial Day luminaria at Fredericksburg National Cemetery.