The Old CONFEDERATE CEMETERY in Lynchburg VA for the CIVIL WAR Dead from the North and South

If you ever get to Lynchburg Virginia, you need to take an hour or so and check out the Confederate Cemetery.

This Cemetery is actually located inside the Old City Cemetery of Lynchburg, and is worth the time you might take to inspect it.

Both are well tended by the City itself, and there has been a lot of effort put into making the site not only a place of contemplation, but one that gives you snippets of our history at every turn, as you stroll through the site.

There are historical buildings, Lily Ponds, flowering plants such as old, non-hybrid roses, and well-placed markers everywhere in this Cemetery..

Lynchburg Virginia was a strategic site for the Confederacy during the Civil War. It was ideally placed along several railroad lines, and turned into a materials distribution point, and more importantly a site of hospitals for treating wounded Confederate soldiers and even some Federal soldiers.

Although all Army field hospitals were atrocious at the time, and had very low survival rates for soldiers, those that did survive their initial treatment, were often transported to hospitals as far from the battle fronts as possible.

If you survived the initial wound, and then the field hospital treatment, that was rudimentary at best, you did have a better chance to survive in these Army Hospitals, that were away from the fighting front.

There were obvious problems with infections, that killed many, but many more were treated and eventually were either released back to their units, or sometimes to go home, depending on how serious their wounds were.

At the time, another killer in any hospital, and especially in military hospitals was the disease Smallpox.

And if you visit this Confederate Graveyard, you will see the graves of many a Confederate soldier who was on the mend from his wounds only to succumb to this arbitrary killer of the times.

This Cemetery contains the remains of many soldiers from all of the Confederate states, and others.

The Confederate Cemetery itself is a peaceful and quiet place for a visit. It is well laid out, and sadly, there are over 2200 grave sites of soldiers from 14 states who died in the Hospitals in Lynchburg during the War Between the States.

There were originally over two hundred graves of Union soldiers who died in the Lynchburg Hospitals during the Civil War, but the Federal government moved almost all of these remains to other Union Cemeteries soon after the War.

There is an unmarked section of the grave sites, inside the Confederate Cemetery, that was called Negro Row. These are the sites of internment for hospital slaves and officers servants that died during the War.

The occupants of these graves are fairly well documented, and much of the data that is available, as well as other sources and links, are available via another a very good website called GraveGarden .

As you can see from the the pictures I have attached, the Confederate Cemetery includes some other very interesting items, including an Obelisk listing the states of the soldiers buried there. This obelisk was erected in 1869 by the local Ladies Memorial Association.

The Pest House Medical Museum is nearby, and includes a room with a realistic depiction of what was at the time called the House of Pestilence, which was a quarantine hospital in Lynchburg run by a Doctor John J. Terrell.

There are a number of very informative markers at the entrance to the Confederate Cemetery, and placed around the grave sites themselves.

Many of these markers are excerpts from the local newspapers at the time, and are a good, informative read for the visitor.

As you can tell from the pictures here, most of the grave markers are marked in abbreviations of the dead soldiers name, as well as the Confederate Army unit and state that they served for.

But, some sites have additional markers placed there by family members, or others, in the past, that are a little more descriptive of the person.

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