150 Years of Arlington (1 Viewer)

[BLReed]

On June 15th, 1864 the first burials were conducted on the grounds of Arlington House. The house and grounds had been seized by the Government from Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Ann Curtis. The house had been built by George Washington Parke Curtis, Mary’s father and the grandson of George Washington as a tribute and Monument to the Father of our Country.

In May of 1861 the Union Army seized the house, making it the Headquarters for the Army of the Potomac. In 1864 the Federal Government confiscated the Arlington House and grounds because Mary Curtis-Lee, the legal owner had not paid the taxes in person. Robert E. Lee never returned to the house, Mary Curtis Lee only returned once in 1873 shortly before her death. Neither ever publicly contested the confiscation the property. Their son sued the government after their death and won. The house and its 1,100 acres of land were purchased by Federal Government for the amount of $145,000.

By 1864 the Military Cemeteries around Washington D.C. were full, new space was urgently needed, Quartermaster of the Army General Montgomery C. Meigs ordered burials to begin at Arlington House. Meigs had been a Junior Officer under Lee and considered him to be a traitor. He had stated the he intended to make the house uninhabitable. Part of that plan was ordering the first 63 individual burials and a mass concrete burial vault (The first monument) for those killed at Bull Run be placed in Mary Curtis’s Rose Garden.

By the end of the Civil War over 15,000 Burials had taken place at Arlington. Today the number of people buried at Arlington is approaching 300,000. The vast majority of those who rest at Arlington are Military. They include Union and Confederate dead, as well the dead of our nation’s allies as well as enemies.

 

[damian]

Which enemies are buried there and why?

 

[larso]

'Which enemies are buried there and why?'

My question too? Maybe POWs who died in US hands? U-boat KIAs?

 

[BLReed]

Which enemies are buried there and why?

http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2012/may/23/enemy-pows-arlington-national-cemetery/

"A little-known subset of three "enemy" soldiers who died as prisoners of war also are buried in Arlington: One German and two Italians captured during World War II. They were among hundreds of thousands brought to the United States, and more than a few died in captivity. The Geneva Conventions governed treatment of prisoners, and the United States honored those rules in hopes that its enemies would treat American prisoners decently. Those captured could not be forced to work in war industries. However, they could be permitted to work in agriculture, for modest pay, if captors decided they presented no risk to the neighborhood and likely would not try to escape. So it was with the German and both Italians.

#The personalities of these individuals are unknown because, at war's end, virtually all records of prisoners were transferred to military authorities in their home countries through the International Red Cross. The National Archives has boxes of records dealing with administration of prisoners and prison camps, but a paucity of information by named individual. Cemetery files provide little more than name, nationality, date of death and grave location.

#The German Embassy and the Italian Embassy in Washington provide no information about the three individuals and only suggest contact with specialized files centers at home, a process that takes months (or years) and is tightly bound by "privacy" rules, apart from language hurdles.

#The known facts about the trio, therefore, are brief. Mario Batista and Arcangelo Prudenza were captured in North Africa, and Anton Hilberath appears to have been taken there also. Permitted to do farm work, the three were placed on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Each fell ill and died. Geneva Conventions prescribe that prisoners should be "honorably buried," which is understood to mean about the same quality of care as would be provided for the captor's own soldiers.

#Arlington was the nearest military cemetery. Likely viewed as a routine administrative matter under the Conventions, all three were interred not far from the low stone wall separating the cemetery from Fort Myer.

#In one case, at least, the soldier is not forgotten. On the second Sunday before Advent, its embassy advises, Germany celebrates "Volkstrauertag," which means "the people's day of mourning." If a soldier's grave is in foreign soil, a military attachÈ places the floral display. Hilberath, therefore, is remembered each year. The Italian Embassy could provide no information on whether a similar gesture is afforded its soldiers who fell while in service.

#Since Arlington is the final resting place of so many of U.S. heroes, there can be no question that Batista, Prudenza and Hilberath have been "honorably buried."

 

[damian]

Thanks for that informative post
I did not know that so I have learnt something.