The Mountain Branch, the ninth of eleven branches of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, was authorized in 1901 in Johnson City, Tennessee, and its first resident arrived in 1903, a year before the home officially opened. Civil War veterans formed the largest initial population. Covering about 400 acres, the campus was designed by architect Joseph H. Freelander with administrative and hospital buildings, barracks, staff housing, a mess hall, chapel, two lakes, and a cemetery, and its Beaux Arts buildings were constructed of local timber, brick, and limestone. Freelander’s plan remained unchanged until the care of World War I veterans brought new facilities and the repurposing of older buildings. In 1930, the National Homes were merged with the U.S. Veterans Bureau of Pensions to form the Veterans Administration, now the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The original 38-acre cemetery on the north side of the campus was established to bury National Home residents, and on September 18, 1903, Francis Conaty, formerly a private in the 18th New York Infantry, became the first person buried there. Its oldest burial areas are Sections A through H around Monument Circle. Three Civil War Medal of Honor recipients are buried there: Pvt. Henry G. Buhrman of the 54th Ohio Infantry, who was among volunteers who stormed Confederate works at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 22, 1863; Lt. Frederick Clarence Buck of the 21st Connecticut Infantry, who, though wounded, refused to leave the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, Virginia, on September 29, 1864; and Seaman Thomas Smith of U.S.S. Magnolia, who showed coolness under fire in the assault at St. Marks, Florida, on March 5-6, 1865. Walter Preston Brownlow, a prominent East Tennessee businessman, newspaper worker, Jonesboro postmaster, Republican congressman elected in 1897, and member of the National Home Board of Managers from 1902 until his death in 1910, was the driving influence behind the Mountain Branch, and a large granite obelisk in Monument Circle marks the graves of Brownlow and his wife, Clayetta.