The Tombstone House
Imagine a house that used parts of old tombstones as part of the structure.
The Siege of Petersburg, also known as the Petersburg Campaign, was nine months (June 9, 1864-April 2, 1865) of trench warfare as Ulysses S. Grant assaulted Robert E. Lee’s armies. While ending the war was the primary objective, Grant also wanted to bottle up Lee’s troops so the Confederate Army could not launch out and attack Federal forces and possibly influence the 1864 Presidential election.
The 3rd Indiana Calvary
Grant’s strategy was to lay siege, not in the traditional manner of just surrounding a town or fortress and “waiting out” the inhabitants, but by severing the railroad connections and transportation hub that supplied Lee with supplies, and subjecting the Confederate troops to the type of trench warfare and bombardments that would be a precursor to the trench warfare of the First World War.
Lee was unable to sustain the fight and abandoned the city, retreating to Appomattox Court House where, realizing that the war was lost, Lee said, “…there is nothing left me to do but to go and see Gen. Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.” On April 3, 1865 the Union troops entered the city of Richmond, Virginia, where President Lincoln met, shook hands, and greeted freed slaves.
On April 9,1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, who told his officers, “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.”
The Union soldiers who died during the Siege of Petersburg were buried at Poplar Lawn Cemetery. When the wooden markers that designated their graves rotted away, upright marble headstones were erected to replace them.
Originally the War Department managed the cemetery, but in 1933, the management of Poplar Grove National Cemetery was transferred to the National Park Service from the War Department. But during the Great Depression, funds for maintaining the cemetery, and the headstones, was hard to come by, so a compromise was reached. The tombstones were in half, laying the top portion – which contained the names and details of the deceased soldiers – flat on the ground. These flat graves saved the city money on mowing the grass and other maintenance. A year later, in 1934, the National Park Service determined that to “achieve a more park-like appearance” the grave markers should be laid flat. This would simplify the mowing of the grounds giving them a more park-like appearance. So under the National Park Service the Civilian Conservation Corps were tasked with cut the gravestones in half and then returning them to where they had originally been placed. But that plan backfired because over time the markers, like any stone, settled into the ground, which became uneven and harder to mow and maintain.
There were 2,200 bottom halves of the Union dead headstones which, in 1943 were sold to Oswald Young for $43. He used them in the building of his house, its chimney, and the walkway. To this day it is known as The Tombstone House.
In 2017, the cemetery was restored to its original design. The markers, which were becoming disfigured and illegible, were replaced. Known graves received new upright stones. Places where it was unknown who was interred received blocks. Between the number of known and unknown burials (many soldiers were buried but their remains could not be identified), Poplar Grove National Cemetery has 6,292 soldiers buried on the grounds with 5613 graves honoring those fallen soldiers whose names are known.
