Annapolis National Cemetery

In April 1861, Gen. Benjamin Butler and his Massachusetts troops entered Annapolis to ensure Maryland remained in the Union, and the U.S. Army reformed the Department of Annapolis under Butler to secure communication between the North and Washington, D.C. By summer, the U.S. Naval Academy had been converted into a hospital, and as Civil War fighting along the eastern seaboard intensified, St. John's College became a second hospital. Annapolis also served as a parole camp, where Union and Confederate forces exchanged prisoners on a one-for-one basis; some were confined, while others were paroled and released after swearing not to take up arms until formally exchanged. To keep exchanged Union soldiers available for service, the U.S. Army housed parolees in camps rather than allowing them to return home, and at one time Camp Parole near Annapolis held 25,000 Union soldiers awaiting exchange. In 1862, the government leased 4 acres from Judge Nicholas Brewer for what became Annapolis National Cemetery, where most of the graves belong to men who died at Camp Parole or in the city's military hospitals. An 1868 army inspection recorded 2,661 burials, including seven civilians, three female nurses, one Russian sailor, and one child, but by 1874 the total had been revised to 2,482 burials, including 211 unknowns and fourteen citizens. In the 1910s, a federal commission identified a few Confederate prisoner-of-war dead buried there, and their graves were marked with distinctive pointed-top headstones. The irregularly shaped cemetery occupies rolling land enclosed by a stone wall; its original burial sections were separated by grass paths, a central drive ran from the main gate around the flagstaff mound to the opposite wall, and the original 1871 lodge was razed and replaced in 1940 with a Colonial Revival-style building, when the old gates were also replaced because they were too narrow for automobile access.

Annapolis, Maryland · United States