Ashland, Virginia, situated only 15 miles due north of Richmond, enjoyed
a mid-nineteenth century reputation for beauty. Its pleasant small town
atmosphere attracted summer vacationers from the capital city. The
Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad conveniently ran (and
still runs, now known as Amtrak) through the center of the village.
Those two things---, the railroad and the proximity to Richmond---gave
Ashland an unusually prominent role in the Civil War.
Ashland immediately became a bustling camp of instruction in 1861. It
saw the presence of "Stonewall" Jackson's hard-marching infantry in
1862, and witnessed two sizeable cavalry battles in 1864. But the list
of Confederate dead buried in Ashland's cemetery, published in the
accompanying list, does not include men killed in those episodes. Their
ultimate disposition is uncertain, although they may be in the cemetery,
too. Instead this list offers a glimpse into the brief period when
Ashland served as a hospital center.
In the spring of 1862, Confederate forces shadowed Fredericksburg to the
north, keeping an eye on Federal forces there. Other Southern
formations guarded Richmond's eastern approaches, while others camped
north of the city. During this period the authorities, perhaps tempted
by Ashland's central location, converted some of the village's
buildings, including its primary hotel and several churches, into
hospitals. Presumably thousands of men spent time in the makeshift
hospitals, because hundreds of them died there of various ailments in
April and May 1862. They were carried outside of town to a vacant lot
that was "a mass of undergrowth and briars." As more men died, the lot
filled up and became a regular cemetery, now known as Woodland.
Immediately after the war a group of twelve Ashland girls went to the
site "with hoes and rakes...and cleaned away briars and weeds around the
graves." Their efforts became an annual event and stimulated the
creation of the Ashland Memorial Association. That group of ladies
eventually raised a large obelisk in the late 1880s that commemorates
all of the Confederate dead in the cemetery. Unfortunately the
individual grave sites are no longer marked, making it impossible to
find the precise location of any soldier.
The Library of Virginia in Richmond owns a manuscript ledger of more
than 250 Confederate soldiers who died between April 10 and May 27,
1862. The register typically includes a soldier's name, his unit, his
exact place and date of death, and the number of the grave in which he
was buried. The commemorative marker states that more than 400 soldiers
are in the cemetery; if that is so, that leaves approximately 150
Confederate soldiers unaccounted for.
Like other similar registers of that period, this one for Woodland
cemetery is clogged with inaccuracies. The soldiers' names often are
incomplete or incorrectly spelled. The unit designations, though less
garbled, than the names, also contain mistakes. Only about eighty
percent of these men can be reliably identified. While it undoubtedly
is true that some of the other twenty percent simply have badly
misspelled names, it also is certain that some of the soldiers on the
list on the list were fresh recruits who died almost immediately after
joining the army. Those men often did not live long enough to build up
official service records, and all too often the record of their death is
the only evidence that they were in the army. One particularly poignant
story concerns the Carneal brothers of the 55th Virginia Infantry. John,
Richard, and Thomas, all members of Company K, died in Ashland on three
consecutive days in April.
The list has been checked against published rosters where available, but
without easy access to service records for men in Alabama, Arkansas,
Mississippi, and South Carolina regiments, it has not been possible to
confirm the identities of a few men from those states. There is one
"Yankee" and several black servants who were connected withvarious
regiments. The list also includes two men in grave #47 and no one in #46.
(Notes on using the roster. The names have been revised from their
appearance in the original interment book. William Fetherwood of the
35th Georgia, for instance, has been corrected to William Leatherwood.
All revisions are shown in italics typeface, while all original 'but
inaccurate' information has been retained in parenthesis for comparative
Robert E. L. Krick
Woodland Cemetery Roster Page