Confederate Row

Frederick County stood at the center of the Civil War military campaigns of 1862, 1863, and 1864, and Frederick City served as a major hospital center for soldiers of both armies. Hundreds of men died there, creating a need for local burial, and many Southern families lacked the money or transportation to bring their loved ones home. Unlike Union dead first placed in this cemetery, Confederate casualties were not later reburied in nearby Antietam National Cemetery. Today, 275 identified soldiers lie beside 29 unknowns in Mount Olivet Cemetery's Confederate Row. On September 29, 1862, Jacob Engelbrecht wrote that he went to Mount Olivet Cemetery with the corpse of a Union soldier, Matthew Burk of Company G, 59th Regiment New York, and helped carry him to a grave in a long trench about 7 feet wide and about 30 feet long, where coffins were placed about one inch apart and as many as 8 or 10 were buried some days. He wrote that soldiers of the Confederate army were buried in another row the same way and had by that time reached sixty, with some headboards marked with names including Lieut. Col. T. C. Watkins of the 22 Regiment South Carolina and Lieut. Raisin Pitts of the 6th Regiment Alabama.

Frederick, Maryland · United States