Tag: Gettysburg National Cemetery (Gettysburg PA)

Wikipedai says: Gettysburg National Cemetery is a United States national cemetery created for Union/Federal casualties of the July 1 to 3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War (1861–1865). It is located just outside Gettysburg Borough to the south, in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

Originally called Soldiers’ National Cemetery, U.S. 16th President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865, served 1861–1865), delivered his Gettysburg Address at the cemetery’s consecration, November 19, 1863. That day is observed annually at the cemetery and in the town as “Remembrance Day” with a parade/procession and memorial ceremonies by thousands of Civil War reenactor troops, both Union Army/United States Army and Confederate States Army and descendants heritage organizations led by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).

The cemetery contains 3,512 interments from the Civil War, including the graves of 979 unknowns. It also has sections for veterans of the Spanish–American War (1898), World War I (1917–1918), and other wars, along with graves of the veterans’ spouses and children. The total number of interments exceeds 6,000.

Union remains were transferred from the Gettysburg Battlefield burial plots (e.g., on Cemetery Hill) as well as local church cemeteries, field hospital burial sites (e.g., Camp Letterman & the Rock Creek-White Run Union Hospital Complex), the “USA General Hospital, York, Pa.” and the Valley of Death where unburied soldiers decomposed in place. Samuel Weaver, as “Superintendent of the exhuming of the bodies”, personally observed the contractor’s workers opening graves, placing remains in coffins, and burying them in the cemetery,  and at least 1 reinterment was from the neighboring Evergreen Cemetery (Adams County, Pennsylvania).