Mt. Olivet Cemetery

Many Union and Confederate soldiers are buried in this cemetery, as well as Barbara Fritchie and other Civil War notables.

Mt. Olivet Cemetery was created in 1854, seven years before the beginning of the Civil War.  Many soldiers killed in nearby battles and those who died in the military hospital in Frederick were originally buried in Mt. Olivet.  Most of the Union soldiers were moved to Antietam National Cemetery after the war, and many of the Confederate soldiers were retrieved by relatives or reinterred in Confederate cemeteries, such as Rose Hill in Hagerstown.  But a few Union soldiers killed in the war and many veterans from the Frederick region are buried in Mt. Olivet, and many Confederate soldiers killed in area battles were reinterred here in 1880 by the Frederick Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.  Many of these soldiers were unknown and were buried in a mass grave, but the gravestones of other Confederate soldiers form a long line on one side of the cemetery.  A Confederate monument was erected near these graves in 1881.  Barbara Fritchie, immortalized in John Greenleaf Whittier’s famous poem, is also buried in Mt. Olivet.