History
Annapolis National Cemetery is one of the 14 national cemeteries established by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 to accommodate the dead from the Civil War. The original plot of land was leased from Judge Nicholas Brewer, for a period of 99 years, but eventually Brewer’s heirs sold the land to the federal government.
During the Civil War, Annapolis was a Union recruit training center. There was also a parole camp nearby (approximately three miles from what was then the city line) where Union prisoners who had been exchanged for Confederate prisoners were held until they could be returned to their own units. The conditions in the camp were crowded and were not particularly sanitary; many soldiers wound up in one of the army field hospitals at the U.S. Naval Academy and at St. John's College in downtown Annapolis. A large number succumbed to wounds they bore when they arrived, small pox, typhoid fever, dysentery or any of a number of other diseases. Most of the original interments were men who died in the parole camp or the field hospitals. Several Confederate prisoners, and one Russian national, also died in Annapolis and are buried in the cemetery.
Many soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who served during, or died in, subsequent wars - as well as some of their dependents - are also interred there.
Annapolis National Cemetery was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
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