Danville Cemeteries

The remains of 1,323 Federal soldiers, including 148 unknown dead, who died in Danville’s Civil War prisons are interred here, many of them victims of smallpox that ravaged the city’s six prisons during the winter of 1863-1864. The names of the dead were recorded by the rector of the Episcopal church, Dr. George Washington Dame, who served as Danville’s military chaplain during the Civil War, and he turned the records over to Federal authorities when Gen. Horatio Wright’s Sixth Corps occupied the city in April 1865. This burial ground, originally part of a Danville city cemetery, was officially established as Danville National Cemetery on August 14, 1887. Freedman’s Cemetery, originally set aside as part of Green Hill and occupying about 11 acres, was established in 1872 for recently freed slaves and other African-American citizens. Green Hill Cemetery contains more than 450 Confederate veterans, most of whom died after the war; its plots, lanes, and roadways were designed by Confederate engineer Capt. E.T.D. Myers, who was in Danville during the war supervising construction of the railroad to Greensboro, North Carolina. The cemetery is named for Dr. Nathaniel T. Green, and its original 45 acres were purchased from his estate in 1863 as a town cemetery, while the northeast corner where all the Union soldiers were buried was taken by the Federal government after the war and became the National Cemetery.

Danville, Virginia · United States