Don Pfanz Creates Walking Tour Of Fredericksburg National Cemetery
By Deborah Fitts
June 2005

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - In a change of pace for Civil War enthusiasts, historian Don Pfanz of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park will offer a rare look at the history of Fredericksburg National Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend. He will lead the "Where Valor Sleeps: Fredericksburg's National Cemetery" walking tour.

The 12-acre cemetery, prominently sited on a steep hillside above the park visitor center, holds the remains of 15,200 Union soldiers that were retrieved from half a dozen battlefields within a 40-miles distance. Pfanz will use the fruits of his recent research locally and at the National Archives to detail the origins of the cemetery and the burial process, explain peculiarities of its layout and discuss some of the men - and women - buried there.

At Fredericksburg, the cemetery was launched by the War Department in June of 1866 atop Marye's Heights, part of the strong Confederate position in the battle of Fredericksburg. The "Burial Corps" was initially comprised of soldiers but soon evolved into civilians paid by the Quartermaster Corps. The workers ranged to the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna and Mine Run in search of remains, largely completing the reinterments by the fall of 1868.

Pfanz discovered that there was intense concern in the months following the Confederate surrender that local residents "were going to get their revenge by desecrating the graves of Union soldiers" where they lay on battlefields. "They believed there was a conspiracy among Southerners to plow up the graves and take the bones to the bone mill to use as fertilizer."

Even after the remains were safely relocated to the cemetery, fears of vandalism at this and other national cemeteries prompted rules requiring cemetery superintendents to ensure that the facility was safeguarded at all times, "even if he left for just an hour."

Meanwhile, Pfanz found that the cemeteries typically began with "wooden features" - wooden fences, grave markers and cemetery lodges. But in about five years came a trend to permanence, with brick walls, stone grave markers and stone lodges.

Pfanz was intrigued to discover patterns in the burials of unknowns, who comprise about 85 percent of the remains. Typically, unknowns were buried in ones or twos or in groups ranging up to a dozen. Soldiers found on the Fredericksburg battlefield were "almost invariably buried in groups of three, while those from Chancellorsville are almost invariably buried in groups of five. It's almost uncanny, but the reason has been lost over time."

Soldiers whose identities were known were usually buried separately. But Pfanz noted that in a half-dozen instances, remains that were identified were buried more than one to a grave. "It seems to be that if they were found together on the battlefield, whoever brought them in decided to keep them together," he said.

The steep hillside provided its own engineering challenges. It is cut into nine terraces, but in the 1870s severe erosion and drainage problems plagued the cemetery and carried off the sod. A century ago the army planted hundreds of trees in the cemetery, but storms and disease have taken their toll and only a smattering remain.

Few individuals of note are buried there. "I call it a soldiers' cemetery," Pfanz said, because there are only a few dozen commissioned officers, and the highest rank represented is colonel. "For most of the field officers, somebody managed to get their bodies back to the North," but the enlisted men stayed. Two of the graves are of women who served in the war and were buried as veterans. Oddly, there is one child, and an English airman from the early 20th century.

Pfanz said he enjoyed creating the new tour as a break from "talking about flank attacks." Also, in the early 1980s he lived for more than four years in the superintendent's cemetery lodge.

Pfanz will present his walking tour on May 30 from 9 to 10:30 a.m., starting at the park visitor center. The tour is free, with no reservations required. It will be followed by the annual Memorial Day ceremony, with a speaker and color guard, in the cemetery starting at 11 a.m. More information is available from the park at (540) 373-6122.

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