Burying the Dead

Burying the Dead (HM33J)

Location: Spotsylvania, VA 22551 Spotsylvania County
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Country: United States of America
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N 38° 17.876', W 77° 42.877'

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Inscription

The Battle of the Wilderness

At battles end, more than 2,000 Union dead lay scattered through the Wilderness. The first major effort to bury the dead came more than a year later, when a Union regiment received orders to proceed to the Wilderness and inter those Union soldiers whose remains still littered the landscape.

For a week burial parties combed the woods, gathering up as many remains as they could find. They placed the bones in wooden coffins and buried them in two temporary graveyards; one near here beside the Orange Plank Road and the other on the Orange Turnpike. Wilderness National Cemetery #2, as this plot was called, held 534 bodies. Today shallow depressions in the ground are all that remain.

The cemeteries remained in existence only a short time. Concluding that it would be easier to manage one large cemetery rather than several small ones, the War Department transferred the Wilderness dead to Fredericksburg National Cemetery in the late 1860s.

Having collected all that a thorough search could discover, graves were dug?.Ten skulls were placed in each coffin, which was then filled with bones - the lid screwed on, and...lowered into their last resting place, unknown, but not unhonored nor unsung.
Lieutenant William D.F. Landon, 1st United States Volunteer Veterans.
Details
HM NumberHM33J
Tags
Placed ByFredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, National Park Service, Department of the Interior
Marker ConditionNo reports yet
Date Added Sunday, October 12th, 2014 at 4:23pm PDT -07:00
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Locationbig map
UTM (WGS84 Datum)18S E 262610 N 4242358
Decimal Degrees38.29793333, -77.71461667
Degrees and Decimal MinutesN 38° 17.876', W 77° 42.877'
Degrees, Minutes and Seconds38° 17' 52.56" N, 77° 42' 52.62" W
Driving DirectionsGoogle Maps
Area Code(s)540
Closest Postal AddressAt or near 7 State Rte 621, Spotsylvania VA 22551, US
Alternative Maps Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSR Maps, OpenCycleMap, MyTopo Maps, OpenStreetMap

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