In 1872, the New York legislature passed an unfunded bill creating the New York Soldiers' and Sailors' Home, and the Grand Army of the Republic raised money for its first three buildings. The State Home served its first meal on Christmas Day 1878, later growing to more than 100 structures on almost 400 acres. Its population reached 2,187 in 1906, then fell to 192 by 1928 as aging Civil War veterans died. In 1929, the federal government took over the facility as the Bath Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the last of eleven National Homes established since 1865, and in 1930 those homes were merged with the U.S. Veterans Bureau and Bureau of Pensions to form the Veterans Administration, now the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The cemetery's first burial was Pvt. William C. Terrell in 1879, and by 1912 an estimated 4,225 Civil War veterans were buried there, including former members of the U.S. Colored Troops. Among those buried there is Pvt. Robert Knox Sneden, a topographical engineer in the Army of the Potomac who chronicled the Civil War in drawings and maps, was captured in November 1863, spent thirteen months in Confederate prisons including Andersonville, returned to New York City after his December 1864 release and discharge, then entered the State Home in 1904 and died there in 1918. Five Civil War Medal of Honor recipients are also buried there: Pvt. George M. Grueb, Sgt. John Kiggins, Pvt. George Ladd, Sgt. Charles E. Morse, and Seaman James Roberts, recognized for valor in actions during the war.