HAMPTON, VA - CEMETERIES – Fort Monroe Cemetery
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Source: Library of Virginia Digital Collection


LVA Titled Files: Survey Report, Site of burying ground at Fort Monroe:
                  1937 Mar. 3
                  Research made by Mrs. Eleanor S. Jacobs

Cemetery Location:  Follow Route #60 out of Phoebus to Fort Monroe, continue on 
                    Ingallis Road; this you enter and follow until you come to 
                    Fenwick Road which is about ¼ mile.  Turn west on Fenwick 
                    Road and the site is at the end of this road.
                    Hampton, Virginia


DATE:

About 1819.

OWNERS:

Owned by the United States Government.

DESCRIPTION:

This cemetery was started on a narrow strip of land next to the beach northwest 
of the fort.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE:


The first cemetery at Fort Monroe started about 1819 and was known as the “Pine 
Forest”, a narrow strip of land next to the beach northwest of the fort and 
joined the Buckroe Farm.  This proved to be an objectionable site because here 
was the Post Cemetery containing the bodies of all the soldiers and others who 
had died at Fort Monroe during more than half a century, which has long since 
been abandoned.  The Post Cemetery remained at the northwest of the ridge of 
sand hills north of the fort, above the Mortal Batteries.  It had been used to 
inter those who died at the Hygeia Hospital.  In the years immediately following 
the war, many of the bodies were removed and the cemetery abandoned, despite the 
fact that it had an estimated capacity of ten to fifteen thousand graves.  This 
cemetery continued until early in 1860, when it was deemed necessary to have 
this strip of land to build batteries upon as protection for the fort.  These 
bodies were moved to the Hampton National Cemetery just being started by the 
United States Government.  There are no records to show just when this movement 
was begun.

The Anti-Air-Craft guns now stand there.

It is said that some of our foremost military men were buried here and no one 
knows and probably never will know who these were.


SOURCES OF INFORMATION:

Major Robert Arthur’s History of Fort Monroe, pages 88, 131 and 139

Coast Artillery School Print Shop

Coast Artillery School Library

Visit by worker.

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	This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives 
	by:  Joan Renfrow

	NOTICE:  I have no relationship or further information in 
	regards to this family.
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