History of Oakwood Confederate Cemetery

HISTORY OF OAKWOOD CONFEDERATE CEMETERY

ESTABLISHMENT OF OAKWOOD CEMETERY

Graves in Oakwood Cemetery, April 1865. Photograph taken by James F. Gibson [Alexander Gardner Catalog No. 931]

In the years following the movement of the state capital from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1780, the population of the city of Richmond grew steadily. Most of the citizens, at their deaths, were buried either in privately-owned grounds or in church graveyards; a public parcel existed at Saint John's Church. By the early nineteenth century, however, these burial places were filling up and the need for a municipal cemetery became clear. In 1820, the Richmond City Council approved the enclosure and improvement of four acres (more were added later) of city-owned land on Shockoe Hill as the capital's first municipal cemetery.¹

Shockoe Hill Cemetery was landscaped, as was Richmond's most notable privately owned burial ground, Hollywood Cemetery, which was established in 1847. The landscaping was pastoral in design, and was modeled on English cemeteries. For Richmonders, these new cemeteries functioned as parks as well as graveyards, and family excursions and picnics there were common.

By the early 1850s the popularity of Shockoe Hill Cemetery and the low cost of burial there made it necessary for the city to purchase and develop another municipal cemetery. In August 1854, the city bought two tracts totaling 66.168 acres in eastern Henrico County from Fendall Griffin and the heirs of William Cook. In the years since, additional land has been acquired; today Oakwood totals 176.5 acres. It does not appear that the city has ever sold any portion of Oakwood Cemetery to the Commonwealth of Virginia or any other party.²

CREATION OF THE CONFEDERATE SECTION
The first burials in Oakwood Cemetery occurred in 1856. The Richmond City Council created a standing Committee on Burying Grounds to oversee the development and administration of the municipal cemeteries. The committee consisted of two sub-committees, one for Shockoe Hill Cemetery and one for Oakwood Cemetery. On 12 August 1861, following the First Battle of Manassas (21 July) and the large influx of seriously wounded soldiers into the city's hospitals, the council adopted the following resolution: "that the Committee on Oakwood Cemetery be instructed to appropriate a lot for the interment of such soldiers as may die in the City or the County of Henrico." A year later, on 11 July 1862, the council resolved that "the Committee on Oakwood Cemetery be instructed to offer to the Secretary of War so much of the property under their charge as may be necessary for burying the soldiers dying in the service of the Confederate States." The lot reserved for military burials lay in what is today the Confederate section.³
Burials in the Confederate section of Oakwood increased quickly as the numbers of battle casualties and hospitalized soldiers mounted. John Redford, Keeper of Oakwood Cemetery, reported periodically to the council on the numbers interred: 540 soldiers by 12 January 1862; 4,882 by 1 September 1862; 5,483 by 1 October 1862; and 7,120 by January 1863. Redford received an average of $1.46 for each burial.⁴

During the War Between the States, two huge Confederate hospitals were located in Richmond. The largest, Chimborazo, stood in Church Hill, while Winder occupied the ground west of the city, near present-day Maymont. Soldiers who died in Chimborazo were buried at Oakwood and those who died at Winder were interred at Hollywood. In addition, many notable Confederate politicians and commanders, such as former U.S. president John Tyler and Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, were interred at the latter cemetery, and private plot owners often donated their plots for military burials as a patriotic gesture.
In the second year of the war a controversy arose over the commandeering of city-owned land by the Confederate authorities for burials near Hollywood Cemetery. City property that had been slated for a possible reservoir expansion was used by the cemetery for interments under the auspices of the Confederate government, city authorities objected, and the matter came before city council on 11 July 1862. Apparently a rumor had spread that Oakwood was closed to further Confederate burials and the land near Hollywood had been used in part because of that erroneous report. One city councilman proposed purchasing land for use by the Confederate government as a cemetery, but others objected, saying that "there was enough land for the purpose in Oakwood." After much discussion, the council adopted a resolution to inform the Confederate government of the facts about Oakwood and discontinue interments on the reservoir tract.
By war's end the Confederate section of Oakwood Cemetery covered approximately 7.5 acres and contained more than 16,000 dead. Some had been individual burials, while others were buried in groups in trenches. Most graves were marked by wooden boards, but a few had marble or granite slabs. The cemetery staff compiled a burial register containing the last name and first name and middle initial of the deceased; his rank is above private; company, regiment, and state; the grave number, row, and division; and "remarks," including (rarely) dates of death or interment and when marked by marble or granite slabs.⁶

THE LADIES' MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION MOVEMENT
After the war, the soldiers' graves were cared for by the custodians of Oakwood Cemetery. The number of burials rose to about 17,200 as soldiers were reinterred from battlefields around Richmond. Both Oakwood and Hollywood struggled with the effort to maintain thousands of graves.
Meanwhile, even as the war raged, the United States government had established national cemeteries. A year after the war's end, on 13 April 1866, both houses of Congress adopted a joint resolution establishing new burial grounds and creating a formal national cemetery system. The resolution also provided that the Union dead would be removed from battlefields and reinterred in the new cemeteries.⁷
The Congressional resolution angered some Richmonders. An editorial titled "A Melancholy Reflection" appeared in the Richmond Examiner six days after passage, on 19 April. The author noted that while the bodies of those referred to in the resolution as the "Nation's dead" (Union soldiers) were being treated with respect, "the unfortunate Confederate soldier lies where he met his death, forgotten by his friends and contemned by those against whom he fought....Ah, if he does not fall into the category of the 'Nation's Dead,' he is ours--and shame be to us if we do not care for his ashes."⁸ The paper called for the women of the South to assume the responsibility of caring for the deceased as they had cared for the sick and wounded during the war.

The women of Richmond did not need a newspaper editorial to summon them to duty. On the very day the article appeared, a hundred women met at Third Presbyterian Church and formed the Ladies' Memorial Association for the Confederate Dead in Oakwood Cemetery (thereafter usually called the Oakwood Memorial Association). They adopted May 10, the anniversary of the death of Stonewall Jackson, as an annual memorial day, then adjourned to the cemetery for a picnic lunch and an afternoon of clean-up work.⁹
On Thursday, May 10, most city businesses closed in honor of the day, the first recorded memorial day in Richmond. At 10:00 A.M. a brief service was held at Saint John's Church, then the crowd walked to the Confederate section of Oakwood Cemetery, The Richmond Dispatch reported that the day was beautiful, with the sun shining and the birds singing: "All was bright, beauteous, and lovely, except the graves of the poor Confederate soldiers; and they, sinking out of sight, with shattered headboards, overgrown by weeds and rank grasses, showed too plainly the extent of that paralysis of mind and soul from which our people are now awakening."¹⁰
Various speakers addressed the crowd. Robert E, Lee had been invited, but declined in a gracious letter that was read aloud:
I am very much obliged to the ladies of the Memorial Association for "Confederate Dead" for their invitation to attend the inaugural celebration of their society on the 10th instant. It would be most grateful to my feeling to united in the celebration of a Society formed for so pious an object, but it will be impossible for me to do so.
The graves of the Confederate dead will always be green in my memory, and their deeds be hallowed in my recollection.¹¹

After the speeches ended, the audience placed flowers on graves and assisted with the ongoing cleanup efforts. Other memorial days soon followed this one. The Hollywood Memorial Association held its own commemoration at the end of the month, for example, and again Richmond stores closed. Throughout Virginia and the South, other memorial associations held similar events annually.
It is generally assumed (especially in the South) that today's national Memorial Day observances began as Confederate memorial days. Others claim that the day originated in an observance held on 30 May 1864 in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, where two women placing flowers on the graves of their father and son, respectively, met and decided to organize an annual commemorative event. No doubt the truth will never be determined. It does seem certain, however, that the observance held at Oakwood Cemetery on 10 May 1866 was the first of its kind in Richmond.¹²

STATE OBLIGATIONS TO CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS
During the colonial period, each colony organized its own militia or armed forces and was responsible for its soldiers' pay and other benefits. Following the Declaration of Independence, the fledgling national government assumed some of those responsibilities, but the states also paid pensions, distributed land as enlistment boundaries, and so forth. After the War Between the States, the United States government provided pensions and other benefits to Union veterans, but not to former Confederates. In Virginia, the state government filled the void.
Even while the war raged, Virginia's General Assembly passed acts providing for the relief of Confederate soldiers (1863-64). Afterward, the legislature funded artificial limbs for its former soldiers (1867 and subsequently), as well as artificial eyes (1877). In 1886, the General Assembly authorized the payment of pensions to soldiers disabled during the war and to the widows of soldiers killed in the war. Subsequent acts added widows whose husbands died from their wounds after the war or from disease during hostilities, as well as "needy Confederate women" and women who had served as matrons in hospitals during the war. In the 1920s, "Confederate daughters" were added. In 1908, the General Assembly allocated small amounts for the funeral expenses of those on the pension rolls, up to $25.
The General Assembly occasionally passed special acts to add to the pension rolls disabled and indigent former soldiers who for technical reasons were ineligible for inclusion. Generally, the amounts paid to pensioned soldiers were small, $15 to $30 a year.
The Robert E. Lee Camp Confederate Soldiers' Home for disabled and indigent veterans was established in 1883 and built within a few years on the grounds of the present-day Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. On 12 February 1886, the General Assembly authorized an annual appropriation for the home. After the last resident died in 1941, the home was closed.

No state veterans' cemeteries were established for Confederate veterans or soldiers. The soldiers who died during the war were buried on the battlefields where they fell, then gathered during or after the war into such large public cemeteries as Hollywood or Oakwood. (An act passed during the 1869-70 session of the General Assembly provided funds for the removal of Confederate remains from Arlington and Gettysburg and their reinterment in Hollywood Cemetery.) Other soldiers were interred in church, town, or private burial grounds. The graves were cared for by the same persons who maintained the remainder of each cemetery. As veterans died after the war, they usually were buried in their family plot or church or municipal cemetery, not with the soldiers who died during the war.
Confederate memorial associations were formed to decorate the soldiers' and veterans' graves and commemorate their service on Memorial Day, not to handle the routine maintenance of the cemeteries. For example, the act incorporating The Ladies' Memorial Association for Confederate Dead at Oakwood Cemetery stated: "The object and purpose of this corporation shall be to identify, mark and decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers in Oakwood Cemetery."¹³ The maintenance or routine upkeep of the graves was not mentioned because that was the city's task. The members of the association bore the expense of flowers, flags, and the like for their annual ceremonies, as well as any other improvements they wished to make aside from routine maintenance.
The Commonwealth of Virginia did not own or establish cemeteries for War Between the States soldiers or veterans; it did not finance the creation of new cemeteries for the purpose of burying veterans; and it did not provide funds for the routine maintenance of cemeteries. Recognizing the unusually large number of burials in Hollywood and Oakwood cemeteries, the General Assembly passed a resolution on 21 April 1882 authorizing the superintendent of the state penetentiary to "furnish the Hollywood and Oakwood memorial associations from time to time, as may be necessary, a sufficient force of convict labor to keep in order the graves and sections wherein are buried the Confederate soldiers of the army of Northern Virginia."¹⁴ The convicts augmented the city work force when the need arose.

STATE FUNDING FOR MEMORIAL ASSOCIATIONS
By the turn of the century, many of the women who had created the memorial associations had become elderly or had died. On 15 March 1902, the General Assembly passed an act "to appropriate certain sums of money from the public treasury in aid of Confederate memorial association having in their charge cemeteries containing the graves of Confederate soldiers." The preamble to the act outlined the reasons for its passage:

Whereas, there are scattered throughout the State various cemeteries containing the graves of Confederate soldiers; and.
Whereas, some of these are owned by ladies' memorial associations having no funds or means of providing for their permanent care; and,
Whereas, it should be a matter of State pride to preserve such spots from any risk or neglect in the future; and,
Whereas, the women who for a generation have cared for these graves now find that among the manifold cares pressing upon them, and the more immediate needs calling forth the efforts of themselves and of the younger generation, this responsibility demands the attention and aid of the State of Virginia; therefore,

Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That the auditor of public accounts be, and he is hereby, instructed to annually draw his warrant upon the treasurer of the State of Virginia in favor of the treasurer, for the time being, of each of the following memorial associations for the sums hereby appropriated to each of the said memorial associations, respectively....¹⁵

The memorial associations for nineteen cemeteries received funding that ranged from $10 (Abingdon) to $500 (each, for Hollywood and Oakwood). The Oakwood Memorial Association used some of the money to replace wooden headboards with marble ones. Over the next few years the list of associations grew, as did some of the lesser amounts, but the funding for Hollywood and Oakwood remained constant at $500 each. About 1909, the Confederate section of Hollywood Cemetery was placed in the "perpetual care" of the cemetery company. Hollywood continued to receive its annual $500 appropriation until 1912, when it was omitted from the list. That year's act contained the following clause: "Provided, that no association that now or hereafter has its cemeteries and graves placed under perpetual care should receive any portion of this appropriation."¹⁶
On 20 March 1930, the General Assembly passed an act "for putting the Confederate plots in Oakwood Cemetery in perpetual care," and omitted Oakwood from the annual appropriation approved on 26 March. The impetus for the act came from the Oakwood Memorial Association, which had passed a resolution on 6 September 1929 requesting Governor Harry F. Byrd to include $30,000 in the next state budget to carry out the terms of the act. According to the Richmond Department of Public Works, the cost to put the graves in perpetual care was $2,000 per year. The act specified that of the $30,000, $5,000 must be expended immediately for repairs while the remaining $25,000 was paid to the city "to forever preserve and maintain perpetual care of these plots of the Confederate dead." The act further directed the city to accept its trust from the governor and attorney general in some formal manner, and also directed the governor "to annually visit these plots and register his approval or disapproval of the care of said plots to the mayor of the city of Richmond."¹⁷
Governor John G. Pollard began to fulfill the requirements of the act soon after its passage. On 27 Match 1930 he received a letter from Elben C. Folkes, a Richmond attorney and president of the Oakwood Improvement Association, reminding him of the need to make a contract between the state and the city. Pollard replied the next day that he was looking into the matter, In September, Folkes wrote again, urging the governor to encourage the city government to spend the $5,000 on road work in the Confederate section.¹⁸
If the program for the 1954 memorial ceremonies is any indication, each Virginia governor fulfilled his obligation to inspect the grounds by attending the ceremony or detailing another official in his place. Each year the memorial service was preceded by a parade, but as time passed and supporters died or moved away, the size of the parade dwindled. The last ceremony may have been held in 1966, the centennial year of the memorial association.

CURRENT LAW REGARDING CONFEDERATE CEMETERIES
The state has continued to provide funds to Confederate memorial associations (and in recent years, more commonly to the United Daughters of the Confederacy), and the number of associations and chapters on the appropriation list has increased. The amounts allocated have risen as well, but most have remained in the $25-$250 range. In 1980, the General Assembly amended the appropriation to specify as basis of $5 a grave. The actual amounts given to each memorial association did not change, except that all those that received less than $50 annually were increased to that amount. This leads to the conclusion that since the earliest appropriations, the basis has always been $5 a grave or less. In 1982, the General Assembly specified that the basis was "$5 for each grave, monument or marker...not to exceed the total sum of $3,000." In 1989 the General Assembly removed the $3,000 cap and made the basis "the number of graves, monuments and markers...multiplied by the rate of $5 or the actual average cost of routine maintenance, whichever is greater....For the purposes of this section the 'average actual cost of care' shall be determined by the department in a biennial survey of at least four properly maintained cemeteries, each located in a different geographical region of the Commonwealth," The funds are to be expended "for the routine maintenance of their respective Confederate cemeteries and graves and for the graves of Confederate soldiers and sailors not otherwise cared for in other cemeteries," and also in erecting "markers, memorials and monuments." It is worth noting that no cemetery has ever received more than $3,000, even without the cap, except Oakwood.²⁰
According to the 1996 edition of the Code, the cemetery receiving the largest allocation was the Confederate section of Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton, with 600 gravesites (600@$5=$3,000).
Governor George Allen and the General Assembly eventually appropriated a $30,000 grant and an annual grant of approximately $12,000 for improvements to the Confederate section of Oakwood. The Oakwood Confederate Cemetery Trust, Inc. is working with the cooperation of the City of Richmond and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to make improvements at Oakwood.

CONCLUSIONS
The Confederate section of Oakwood Cemetery was created in 1861 to receive the bodies of soldiers killed in action or who died of wounds or illness at Chimborazo Hospital. The city of Richmond, which owned Oakwood Cemetery, also owned -- and continues to own -- the Confederate section. The state has not owned cemeteries and did not fund the routine maintenance of Oakwood or any other cemetery containing Confederate burials. After the war, the Oakwood Memorial Association worked with the city to improve the plots and commemorate the soldiers of memorial days. Beginning in 1902, the Commonwealth of Virginia gave associations such as Oakwood's an annual appropriation to aid in their memorializing activities, but discontinued it whenever a cemetery was placed under perpetual care, as occurred in 1930 for Oakwood. The 1930 act did not specify that the city was to retain the balance of the $30,000 appropriation and use it for the care of the Confederate plots, but the city chose to do so, investing the money and spending parts of the interest on equipment. The state has continued to contribute a pittance to the memorial associations and UDC chapters caring for Confederate plots "not otherwise cared for." S.B. 1154 places Oakwood Cemetery back on the annual allocation list.
By John S. Salmon
Historian, Department of Historic Resources
Copyright July 1997 - Used with permission

OTHER RELATED DOCUMENTS

Richmond Dispatch ~ April 28, 1862

Richmond Dispatch ~ July 26, 1862

Richmond Enquirer ~ June 11 and 14, 1864

$30,000 Sought For Perpetual Care Of Confederate Graves (1929)

Virginia Acts of Assembly (1930)

Return to Oakwood Confederate Cemetery Trust
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Last modified: 10-03-00
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