150 Years of Arlington
On June 15th, 1864 the first burials were conducted on the grounds of Arlington House. The house and grounds had been seized by the Government from Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Ann Curtis. The house had been built by George Washington Parke Curtis, Mary’s father and the grandson of George Washington as a tribute and Monument to the Father of our Country.
In May of 1861 the Union Army seized the house, making it the Headquarters for the Army of the Potomac. In 1864 the Federal Government confiscated the Arlington House and grounds because Mary Curtis-Lee, the legal owner had not paid the taxes in person. Robert E. Lee never returned to the house, Mary Curtis Lee only returned once in 1873 shortly before her death. Neither ever publicly contested the confiscation the property. Their son sued the government after their death and won. The house and its 1,100 acres of land were purchased by Federal Government for the amount of $145,000.
By 1864 the Military Cemeteries around Washington D.C. were full, new space was urgently needed, Quartermaster of the Army General Montgomery C. Meigs ordered burials to begin at Arlington House. Meigs had been a Junior Officer under Lee and considered him to be a traitor. He had stated the he intended to make the house uninhabitable. Part of that plan was ordering the first 63 individual burials and a mass concrete burial vault (The first monument) for those killed at Bull Run be placed in Mary Curtis’s Rose Garden.
By the end of the Civil War over 15,000 Burials had taken place at Arlington. Today the number of people buried at Arlington is approaching 300,000. The vast majority of those who rest at Arlington are Military. They include Union and Confederate dead, as well the dead of our nation’s allies as well as enemies.
When I visit Arlington it is not the grand monuments that capture my attention, it is the rows of identical white head stones, and to me they are a sacred forest of stone that demand silence and respect.
Category: Arlington National Cemetary
Enigma4you…Thank you for this article. It is a day to remember for more than one reason. Arlington…a national treasure more valuable to me than any art hanging in the National Archives, Museums and Smithsonian.
Enigma4you…By the way…Happy Father’s Day. God bless you and your son.
E4U- good post on Arlington’s history. One comment, Mary’s family name was Custis, not Curtis.
I know and thanks, I caught that this morning when it posted.
I had it right but had a cross over issue from word to wordpress and lost allot of formatting, by the time I got that fixed I was so disgusted that I did not re read after a friend of mine proof read. unknown to me she changed it.
A “sacred forest of stone” is a very nice turn of phrase.
I know it was a good Father’s Day for my Dad, he and my Mom are together, about 150 yards east of the upper visitor’s center. To him, any day with her was a better day than the best day without her.