The Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery on
Seattle, Washington's
Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...
is a
cemetery situated just north of
Lake View Cemetery on the hill's northern slope, on East Howe Street between 12th and Everett Avenues East.
A consortium of Seattle's five
Grand Army of the Republic posts –
Stevens Post #1, Miller Post #31, Cushing Post #56, Saxton Post #103, and Green Lake #112 – established the cemetery in 1895 on land donated by Huldah and David Kaufman, two of the city's earliest
Jewish settlers, who arrived in 1869. The G.A.R. posts maintained the cemetery until 1922, when they gave the property, excluding of the 526
gravesites, to the city of Seattle. The association deeded the gravesites to the Stevens Post who hired neighboring Lake View Cemetery to maintain the grounds.
The cemetery fell into decline over the following decades, because of confusion over land title, the failure in 1939 to secure
WPA
WPA may refer to:
Computing
*Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard
*Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing
*Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada
* Windows Performance Ana ...
project, the imposition during
World War II of the Coast Artillery on the grounds, and so on. In 1960, the city attempted to transfer maintenance to the
Veterans Administration, either
in situ or by moving the graves to
Fort Lawton in
Magnolia, now
Discovery Park, but the VA was unable to allocate money on cemeteries it did not own, and the graves were never moved. The land surrounding the graves came under the jurisdiction of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation.
In 1996, the parks department proposed that the park become an off-leash dog-run; in response to this, the Friends of the GAR Cemetery Park formed the next year. Members of the group now staff monthly work parties, are involved in headstone replacement, and perform daily
flag raising.
The cemetery holds the remains of
Medal of Honor recipient
Frank Bois
Frank Bois (or Boise) (September 13, 1841 – January 25, 1920) was a Canadian sailor who fought in the American Civil War. He received the U.S. military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during the Siege of Vicksburg on ...
(1841–1920), who was honored for heroism while aboard the USS ''Cincinnati'' during the Battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Civil War.
Friends of the GAR Cemetery Park
/ref>
See also
* Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery (Portland, Oregon)
References
External links
Friends of the GAR Cemetery Park
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20040926053422/http://home.comcast.net/~suvcw1/cemetery/graves/seattle.pdf Internees list (PDF)*
*
{{Capitol Hill, Seattle
Cemeteries in Seattle
Capitol Hill, Seattle