Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Civil War Era National Cemeteries: Honoring Those Who Served |
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New Albany, Indiana |
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New Albany National Cemetery in New Albany, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the original 14 national cemeteries established in 1862. During the Civil War, New Albany was an important hospital center for the Union. One of the hospital’s doctors designed the 5.5-acre cemetery.
The town of New Albany boomed in the mid-19th century, as its strategic location just below the Falls of the Ohio River made it an ideal ship building center. With the onset of the Civil War, New Albany became an important supply center and training ground for Union troops, and in 1862, the city became a major hospital center. The Federal Government rented several schools and other buildings in town, converting them into infirmaries to care for wounded soldiers transported here on steamers on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Dr. Thomas Fry, a former brigade surgeon who supervised the New Albany hospitals, recommended the creation of a cemetery to inter soldiers who died at the local hospitals and those who died while training at Camp Noble. In 1862, Congress established the New Albany National Cemetery, along with 13 others across the nation, to provide a resting place for Union soldiers who gave their lives for their country. Most of the first interments at New Albany came from the city’s hospitals, but the remains of other soldiers were reinterred from battlefields in Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. The rectangular cemetery is enclosed by a two-foot four-inch tall sandstone wall set with limestone coping. The main entrance, located along Ekin Avenue on the southeast side of the grounds, is marked with a double steel gate and flanked by stone piers with a single pedestrian entrance on the west side of the gate. From this entrance, a central axis runs nearly the entire length of the cemetery, looping around three small circular plots. The first circle, 175 feet inside the main gates, contains the cemetery’s flagpole. The second circle, 350 feet inside the main gates, contains a Bicentennial tree with a small plaque dedicated to Medal of Honor recipients. The third circle, 550 feet from the main gates, is the site of the rostrum. Dr. Crozier, a member of the New Albany hospital staff, created this distinctive landscape design.
Site decorations at New Albany National Cemetery are limited. Two seacoast cannons are planted upright in concrete bases in Section G. Affixed to one of the guns is an 1874 “shield” plaque with the cemetery name, date of establishment, and the number of known and unknown interments. Also onsite is a circa 1909 cast-iron tablet featuring the text of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Located just outside the cemetery wall is a bronze interpretive plaque dedicated by the Floyd County Historical Society. New Albany National Cemetery contains more than 5,000 interments, including nearly 700 unknown Union soldiers. Veterans of the Indian Wars, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam lie here as well. Thirteen members of the locally prominent Vance family are interred in a family plot located in Section D, with burials dating from 1872 to 1915.
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