Danville National Cemetery is a

United States National Cemetery The United States National Cemetery System is a system of 164 cemeteries in the United States and its territories. The authority to create military burial places came during the American Civil War, in an act passed by the U.S. Congress o ...

located in the city of Danville,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. Administered by the

United States Department of Veterans Affairs The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers a ...

, it encompasses and, as of the end of 2005, it had 2,282 interments. It is managed by

Salisbury National Cemetery Salisbury National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery located in the city of Salisbury, in Rowan County, North Carolina. It was established at the site of burials of Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War while held at ...

History

Danville National Cemetery was established by the federal government on August 14, 1867 on a plot of . This was part of the process to recognize and commemorate the military dead. Almost all of the original interments were

Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

prisoners-of-war who had been held in the city of Danville. Tobacco warehouses were converted into

Confederate Confederacy or confederate may refer to: States or communities * Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities * Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...

internment facilities for this purpose. Most of the Union prisoners, as was the case for soldiers throughout the war, died of infectious diseases and malnutrition. These soldiers were initially buried in poorly marked, mass graves. They were later exhumed and reinterred with individual markers. Soldiers were from numerous states, including Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. The cemetery is open to visitors throughout the year. Danville National Cemetery was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1995.

References

External links

National Cemetery Administration

Danville National Cemetery
* *
Danville National Cemetery
at

Find a Grave Find a Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. Its stated mission is "to help people from all over the world work together to find, record and present fin ...

Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia United States national cemeteries Virginia in the American Civil War National Register of Historic Places in Danville, Virginia Danville, Virginia Tourist attractions in Danville, Virginia Historic American Landscapes Survey in Virginia {{DanvilleVA-NRHP-stub