Green-Wood Cemetery's Civil War Project

Green-Wood Cemetery's Civil War Project

In August of 2002, the Green-Wood Historic Fund, part of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn , New York , restored, recast, and rededicated its Civil War Soldiers’ Monument (1869). Inspired by the enthusiasm of the many Civil War re-enactors who attended that rededication, we soon launched the our Civil War Project. This unprecedented Project, soon to begin its fourth year, has several goals:

to identify the thousands of Civil War veterans interred at the cemetery (when we launched this Project, we naively thought that there were 500 or so veterans here),
to write their biographies and locate photographs of as many of them as possible, to tell their stories in a book (in their own words and in a chronology of the Civil War from their perspective),
to mark any unmarked graves with Veterans’ Administration gravestones, and to honor their memory with an exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Toward these ends, hundreds of volunteers have searched the cemetery’s 478 acres for Civil War markers. Through the efforts of many volunteers, working from their home computers, we have gone name-by-name through the muster rolls of regiments raised primarily in New York City or Brooklyn , comparing those names to the cemetery’s online database. In all, we have checked the names of approximately 100,000 Civil War soldiers. We have held research days at the cemetery, during which volunteers have worked with the cemetery’s original records, trying to discover Civil War veterans by comparing a soldier’s name and year of birth to those of the man with the same name at the cemetery or by searching through historic photographs of the cemetery grounds.

Volunteers have been writing biographies; we now more than 350 pages detailing the service and lives of more than 2000 veterans whom we have determined are interred at Green-Wood. And, we have received histories of veterans from descendants across America and Europe , who have read about our Project in The New York Times and in an Associated Press article which ran nationally. We also have been researching the stories of these men in regimental histories, in 19^th century newspapers, and at the National Archives.

On Memorial Day, 2007, we will read the names of all of the Civil War veterans we have found to be interred at Green-Wood Cemetery . Descendants of these men will be invited to attend and read the name of their ancestor. And, by then, we will have done a reverse search of the cemetery, determining which veterans are in unmarked graves, doing the necessary Veterans Administration paperwork to order gravestones for each of them, and will have what are likely to be hundreds of such gravestones lining the entrance to the cemetery. The cemetery will then install these gravestones without charge.

Finally, in the fall of 2007, our Civil War Project will culminate with the book release and an exhibit at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, on memory, Brooklyn , and the Civil War. Fittingly, the Library is located on Grand Army Plaza and bronze memorials to Generals Henry Slocum and Gouverneur Warren are just across the street.

While our Civil War Project is far from done, its rewards have already been great. We have discovered some incredible stories, have been inspired by the generosity of the descendants of these veterans, and even have dug up gravestones that had disappeared into the earth. And, this Project’s rewards undoubtedly will become even greater as we are able to honor more and more of our Civil War veterans.


Col. Edmond Cobb Charles 42nd New York (Tammany Regiment)	Capt. Samuel Sims 51st New York, killed at the Battle of the Crater	William Moir Smith 71st NYSM mortally wounded Battle of 1st Bull Run

Jeff Richman is the official Historian for Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. He has been sharing his expertise for the last 15 years. He is the author of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure.

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