During the Civil War, Jeffersonville and New Albany, Indiana, near the Falls of the Ohio across from Louisville, Kentucky, became important to the Union war effort. Jeffersonville housed Camp Joe Holt, a recruiting and training center for Indiana and Kentucky troops, and in 1864 the U.S. Army completed Jefferson General Hospital, where more than 16,120 Union soldiers were treated. Jeffersonville also functioned as a Union supply depot, with ammunition, rations, uniforms, wagons, and other provisions moving south by railroad through Louisville or down the Ohio River. In New Albany, all or parts of seven Indiana regiments originated there, and in 1862 the Union army turned several schools and other buildings into hospitals under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Fry, who recommended establishing a cemetery nearby. Early in 1866, Capt. E.B. Whitman began collecting information for the reinterment of Union soldiers buried across the Military Division of Tennessee, which included Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Through newspaper notices and three major expeditions to hundreds of battlefields and engagement sites, Whitman helped move thousands of Union dead to twelve new national cemeteries, and in May 1869 he submitted a detailed report on the project to the quartermaster general. Established in 1862, New Albany National Cemetery first received Union soldiers who died in local hospitals, and by 1869 its 5-acre tract held 2,807 interments, with most remains brought from sites along the Ohio River and its tributaries in Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The cemetery was enclosed by a stone wall and included a flagstaff and a rostrum; by the 1870s a brick Second Empire-style lodge was completed for the superintendent and his family, two gun monuments flanked a central walkway, and the present rostrum replaced the original in 1931. Under a law requiring a "meritorious and trustworthy" superintendent, John Jay Smith, a former sergeant in Company H, 33rd U.S. Infantry, was appointed there on August 20, 1868.

Photo: Karl Stelly

Photo: Karl Stelly

Photo: Karl Stelly

Photo: Karl Stelly

Photo: Karl Stelly

Photo: Karl Stelly

Photo: Karl Stelly

New Albany, Indiana · USA