Hampton VAMC National Cemetery

In 1870, the federal government bought the building that had served as Chesapeake Military Hospital during the Civil War and made it the Southern Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the fourth such facility. Authorized for Civil War veterans, including former U.S. Colored Troops, who needed a milder climate than the other National Homes in Maine, Ohio, and Wisconsin, the Tidewater Virginia site grew into a sprawling campus with a theater, library, chapel, and beer hall. Operated like the military, its barracks had company designations and the men wore uniforms, and it was initially open to disabled veterans of the Mexican and Civil wars who received pensions of less than $16 per month. In 1899, more than 3,700 veterans lived there when, on July 29, the chief surgeon sought a yellow fever expert. Doctors quarantined the National Home and adjacent Phoebus, and authorities relocated 1,500 veterans, nearly half the population, while men lived in tents and residence halls were fumigated and bed linens disinfected or burned. These measures controlled the disease’s spread, but about forty cases of yellow fever were confirmed there and thirteen of those men died. Because an earlier yellow fever outbreak had killed more than 2,000 people in Hampton and the quarantine barred anyone from leaving the campus, officials created a new cemetery on the grounds. By September 1899, twenty Civil War and Mexican War veterans were buried there, including eight yellow fever victims, while the rest died of other causes during the quarantine. Two civilians who died in 1909 and 1912 brought the total number of graves to twenty-two. Established because of this brief health crisis at the National Home, it is the smallest national cemetery and has no lodge or enclosing wall.

Hampton, Virginia · United States