Elmwood Cemetery

Elmwood Cemeteryis the final resting place of over 200 Confederate veterans, including 114 who were killed, or who later died from wounds, at the Battle of Antietam.

In 1780 Abraham Shepherd donated one acre of land to the Presbyterian Church in Shepherdstown, Virginia (now West Virginia), which was the beginning of what would become Elmwood Cemetery. In 1833 the localMethodistChurchpurchased a half-acre lot for a burial ground that adjoined the Presbyterian property. After the Civil War, in 1868 the Southern Soldiers’ Memorial Association purchased an adjacent lot that would become the final resting place for Confederate soldiers killed at the Battle of Antietam or of those who later died from wounds. In 1869 theElmwoodCemeterywas officially chartered. Ten additional acres were later purchased for use as a public cemetery.

A total of 114 Confederate dead from the Battle of Antietam were interred in the Confederate section ofElmwoodCemetery, many unidentified. The cemetery was officially dedicated on Confederate Memorial Day,June 5, 1869. A year later the Southern Soldiers’ Memorial Association dedicated a granite monument to the Confederate dead buried there. In the years that followed, the Henry Kyd Douglas Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans assumed responsibility for the cemetery. In 1935 the Douglas Camp and the state of West Virginia placed a monument to Confederate Soldiers in the cemetery, which included a roster of 535 Jefferson County citizens who served in the Confederate army. Approximately 125 additional Confederate veterans are buried in other sections of Elmwood Cemetery, including Henry Kyd Douglas, who grew up on the Ferry Hill Plantation outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland, and who served as a staff officer to a number of Confederate generals, including Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.