Oakwood Cemetery (Richmond)
Encyclopedia
East End (Richmond, Virginia)
The East End of Richmond, Virginia is the quadrant of the City of Richmond, Virginia, and more loosely the Richmond metropolitan area, east of the downtown.-Geographic boundaries:...
of Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
.
Richmond established its first municipal cemetery at Shockoe Hill
Shockoe Hill
Shockoe Hill is one of several hills on which much of the oldest portion of the City of Richmond, Virginia, U.S., was built. It extends from the downtown area, including where the state capitol complex sits, north almost a mile to a point where the hill falls off sharply to the winding path of...
in 1820. The ground was very popular, and by the early 1850s, space was scarce for new burials. The city responded by buying two tracts in what was then Henrico County in 1854, totalling about 66 acres (26.7 ha). The first burials were in 1856, under the aegis of the city's new Committee on Burying Grounds.
In 1861, Richmond was named the capital of the new Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
. After the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
broke out, the city's hospitals and clinics received a large number of critically wounded soldiers. The Committee on Burying Grounds agreed to provide interment for soldiers who died in Richmond or Henrico County, and in July 1862 offered to have Oakwood Cemetery opened for large scale burial of Confederate soldiers, and set aside a separate section of the grounds for this purpose.
Oakwood Cemetery was set as the final resting place of soldiers who died in treatment at Chimborazo Hospital, a massive facility on Church Hill
Church Hill
Church Hill, also known as the St. John's Church Historic District, is an Old and Historic District in Richmond, Virginia. This district encompasses the original land plat of the city of Richmond. Church Hill is the eastern terminus of Broad Street, a major east-west thoroughfare in the Richmond...
. By the end of the war, the Confederate section of the cemetery covered about 7.5 acres (3 ha) and contained around 17,000 burials.
The United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
passed a resolution in 1866, a year after the war's end, providing for the creation of a system of national cemeteries for the interment of veterans and war dead. The resolution also called, controversially, for the removal of Union war dead and reinterment in the new national cemeteries.
Oakwood Cemetery today covers about 176 acres (71.2 ha) of ground, and continues to be maintained by the City of Richmond and various charitable trusts.