Elmwood Cemetery

On Wednesday, September 17, 1862, twelve-year-old Mary Bedinger, asleep at her home Poplar Grove outside Shepherdstown, was awakened by the roar of cannons as Confederate and Union forces near Sharpsburg, Maryland, across the Potomac River, fought in what became the bloodiest day in American history. Soon a seemingly endless stream of wounded men poured into dozens of buildings in and around Shepherdstown that were pressed into service as hospitals, and many of the wounded did not survive. The Southern Soldiers’ Memorial Association of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, was organized in 1867 to acquire a burial site for Confederate soldiers who died during and after the battle, and in 1868 the association purchased a lot from Jacob Line adjacent to the Methodist Cemetery. A total of 114 men, many unknown, are interred there from other initial burial sites. The cemetery was dedicated on Confederate Memorial Day, June 5, 1869, and a monument to the dead was dedicated the next year. A Confederate Soldiers regimental monument erected in 1935 by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the State of West Virginia lists the names of 535 Jefferson County men who served in the Confederate army. In addition to the men buried in the Confederate cemetery, about 125 Confederate veterans are buried in Elmwood Cemetery.

West Virginia · United States