The exact number of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors buried at Oakwood Cemetery is unknown, but the likely number is in excess of 17,000 souls.  Oakwood is also the second largest Confederate cemetery in America. During the early months of the war, Confederate authorities recognized that a cemetery would be needed to accommodate military casualties in Virginia, and on August 12, 1861, the City of Richmond purchased land for this solemn purpose.  The city named the new Cemetery "Oakwood" to parallel the name of the famous "Hollywood Cemetery," also located in Richmond. The military cemetery contains began with approximately 7.5 acres and is commonly referred to as the “Oakwood Confederate Cemetery.”  Over the years, Oakwood Cemetery expanded to over 170 acres and is still an active cemetery. 

Click on this map to learn how to find Oakwood and the Confederate Cemetery within. 

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Many Union soldiers were also originally buried near the Confederates in Oakwood. In 1866 the federal government relocated the bodies of most Union soldiers from Oakwood and buried them in the beautifully maintained Richmond National Cemetery, which for many years stood in sharp contrast to the condition of the Confederate section of Oakwood.  Whereas every Union Grave at Richmond National Cemetery received its own headstone, many of the graves in Oakwood are still marked with a small stone for every three graves with a numerical inscription for each grave plot. Sadly, the vast majority of plots have no marker designating the name, unit, or home state of the soldiers. The Sons of Confederate Veterans is committed to marking every grave at Oakwood with its own headstone, and over the years we have made considerable progress toward this goal with the help of families, organizations, and individuals who want to make a difference.   Read more about the history of Oakwood and consider sponsoring a headstone today. 

Nearly all of the Confederate dead buried at Oakwood during the war came from the hospitals and camps at the eastern end of Richmond. Men who died at Chimborazo and Howard’s Grove hospitals almost always went to Oakwood. So, too, did the soldiers who died in the smaller hospitals that dotted that side of the city. There does not appear to have been any special dividing point that dictated whether a body went to Oakwood or Hollywood. But in a general sense that unofficial line appears to have been at about 18th Street. Men who died in hospitals west of there usually went to Hollywood instead of Oakwood.

A South Carolina soldier witnessed the burial process at Oakwood in 1862 and took the time to write about it. “The hearse comes along with its load of corpses and on the brink of each grave it deposited a coffin on which is placarded the name, company and regiment of the soldier whose remains it contained. No vault was dug, the coffin was lowered into this ditch-like grave and without ceremony the dirt was shoved in, and a small board bearing the number of the grave was placed at the head....”

By September 1, 1862, after just one year of use, the Confederate section of Oakwood contained 5,483 burials. The pace of interments slowed thereafter. That same year a Richmond newspaperman predicted a positive future for “This new and beautiful ‘city of the dead.’” “In future...it will become the Mecca of all visitors, because when the names of the honored dead are spread on the monumental tablet, there is hardly any resident of the Confederate States who will not be able to recognize among them one whom they have known in happier, if not better, days.” “Nobody could wish a more delightful resting place,” concluded the writer.

The precise number of wartime burials is not known. Although published figures vary widely (between 12,000 and 18,000), there is good evidence that the number is between 16,000 and 17,000 men. Mr. John Redford, who served as the cemetery’s caretaker/custodian from its creation until well after the War, said in 1868 that there were about 10,000 identified men and at least 2,000 to 3,000 unidentified Confederate soldiers in Oakwood.

 “Armed with shovels, rakes, and other gardening implements,” the women worked to tidy the cemetery. On the first Confederate Memorial Day, May 10, 1866, Ex-major general Raleigh E. Colston delivered a brief speech to an assembled crowd, and the ever-popular Reverend Moses D. Hoge prayed in an “eloquent and feeling strain.”

The women aggressively and successfully raised money to pay for the headboards they hoped to erect. The first 1,000 probably went into the ground in July 1866. Three months later they contracted for another 2,000 and by the summer of 1867 all of the Confederate graves were “marked with name, regiment, and State.” A May 1870, visitor to the cemetery wrote that at each grave “is a mound....and at the head of each grave, a thick plank of wood stands, painted white, rounded in the head, with name and regiment of each soldier in black letters.”

The ladies next turned their attention to the erection of a marble monument to commemorate all of the Confederate dead in the cemetery. State legislatures around the South contributed to that cause ($1,000 each from North Carolina and Georgia to name only two). For a period of more than five years the association weighed its options, accepted bids, and raised money. Eventually “Mr. Burt” received the contract to create a granite shaft, at the cost of $1,300. The cornerstone was laid before “an immense crowd” in May 1871, and the monument itself probably followed within the next year or two.

Tradition always has stated that Confederate battlefield dead were brought into Richmond’s cemeteries after the end of the war. If that happened at Oakwood in any substantial numbers, no written record of it has been found. In May 1869 the ladies arranged for “a number of dead” from Malvern Hill to be transferred to Oakwood, but available sources suggest that no more than five bodies were involved in that episode.

By 1887 the wooden headboards erected in 1866 and 1867 had rotted to such an extent that the “City Council Committee on Cemeteries” asked permission to remove all the headboards. The Oakwood Association resisted that suggestion for a few months, but finally consented in the autumn of 1887, “as there was no means of having them renewed and it was an inevitable fact that they could not remain in their decayed condition.” The city promised to replace the wooden headboards with more permanent markers, but apparently did not do so. For approximately 15 years the Confederate graves at Oakwood remained unmarked.

The numerous dead at Oakwood remained in the hearts of the thousands of loved ones left too impoverished to remove the bodies for reburial at home or to provide a proper grave marker where they lay. In fact the first known Memorial Day service occurred on May 10, 1866, at Oakwood. The Ladies Memorial Association for the Confederate Dead in Oakwood which had formed just weeks before on April 13 sponsored the event. The Association had gone so far as to request Robert E. Lee to speak at the service which he was unable to attend. However Lee wrote in response to the request that, “The graves of the Confederate dead will always be green in my memory, and their deeds be hallowed in my recollection.” Reporting on the event, The Richmond Dispatch noted the disgraceful condition of the cemetery by stating "All was bright, beauteous, and lovely, except the graves of the poor Confederate soldiers; and they, sinking out of sight, with shattered headboards, overgrown by weeds and rank grasses, showed too plainly the extent of that paralysis of mind and soul from which our people are now awakening."

The association, commonly referred to as the Oakwood Memorial Association, began efforts to improve the dilapidated condition of Oakwood through funds they could raise and a small annual amount from the state. The Association began the process of placing the small marble numerical markers that exist today. Unfortunately, these markers only delineate the location of the graves and provide no information on who is buried in the various plots.

In 1930, the Commonwealth of Virginia passed an act to place the graves of Oakwood into perpetual care at the prompting of the Oakwood Memorial Association. The state provided $30,000 for the purpose of implementing immediate repairs and to fund the perpetual care. The funds were directed to the owner of the cemetery being the City of Richmond. Curiously enough the act required the Governor to annually visit Oakwood to review the care given to the cemetery by the city. As the later portion of the 20th century began, the state of Oakwood had severely deteriorated. Many of the small makers where damaged or had been pushed out of place by improper mowing operations, brush had overtaken parts of the cemetery, mowing was sporadic, and the ravages of time were taking their toll.