Congressional Cemetery

The Congressional Cemetery or Washington Parish Burial Ground is a historic cemetery located at 1801 E Street, SE, in Washington, D.C., on the west bank of the Anacostia River. It is the only "cemetery of national memory" founded before the Civil War. Over 55,000 individuals are buried or memorialized at the cemetery, including many who helped form the nation and the city of Washington in the early 19th century.

Though the cemetery is privately owned, the U.S. government owns 806 burial plots administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Congress, located about a mile and a half (2.4 km) to the northwest, which has greatly influenced the history of the cemetery.

Many members of the U.S. Congress who died while Congress was in session are interred at Congressional Cemetery. Other burials include early landowners and speculators, the builders and architects of early Washington, Native American diplomats, Washington mayors, and Civil War veterans. Nineteenth-century Washington, D.C. families unaffiliated with the federal government also have graves and tombs at the cemetery.

In all, there are one Vice-President, one Supreme Court Justice, six Cabinet Members, 19 Senators and 71 Representatives - including a former Speaker of the House, buried there; as well as veterans of every American war, and the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 23, 1969 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011.