Although relatively far from the battle-lines of the Civil War, Annapolis, Maryland is the final resting place for a significant number of Union Army dead. In the early years of the war Annapolis became the site both of a major military hospital and also of Camp Parole, a facility to which Union prisoners exchanged by the Confederacy were detailed to serve out the remainder of their enlistments. The presence of so many ill and dying soldiers in the city soon necessitated the founding of what was envisioned as a small, temporary cemetery. Unforeseen military and political events, however, quickly expanded the project’s initial scope, and the cemetery eventually witnessed the interments of over 2500 soldiers, the greatest numbers in late 1864 and early 1865. This paper will explore the prehistory of the cemetery, particularly its connection with the Brewer family and the politics underlying its siting on West Street; trace the cemetery’s growth throughout the Civil War; and survey the evolving configuration of the grounds and the different groups of individuals buried there today.
About the presenterMichael Patrick Parker
Michael P. Parker is a retired professor of English at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He has published a number of scholarly works in seventeenth-century British literature, Annapolis and Maryland history, and death studies.