HomeInformation for Researchers and Visitors

Information for Researchers and Visitors

Information for Visitors:

The Fredericksburg National Cemetery is open from dawn to dusk every day.  While visiting the cemetery please watch your step for headstones, roots, and uneven ground.  Please be particularly careful if you choose to walk on the terraces at the front of the cemetery.

If you would like information about the cemetery, walking tour brochures are available in the Visitor Center (or you can use the tours on this site) and our staff there can answer any questions you might have.  Or, you may enjoy the cemetery at your own pace.

Please be respectful when visiting the National Cemetery and follow all park rules and regulations.  Dogs are not allowed within the National Cemetery, although they are allowed in the rest of the park grounds on a leash.

 

Information for Researchers:

The most complete history of the Fredericksburg National Cemetery is Where Valor Proudly Sleeps: A History of Fredericksburg National Cemetery, 1866-1933 by Donald C. Pfanz.  This book was not published for mass audiences, but is available to researchers at each visitor center.

Looking for an ancestor or specific soldier?

If you know the name and information of the soldier you are looking for, please search the burial roster to see if they are a known burial in the National Cemetery.

If you find the soldier you are looking for: 

If you wish to visit the grave of the soldier ask at the front desk of the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor Center next to the National Cemetery.  A staff member will look up the grave number on the cemetery plot map and direct you to the grave site.  You may also inquire if the park has any additional information on the soldier in its records.

If you do not find the soldier you are looking for:

There is a chance that the soldier is buried within the National Cemetery as an “unknown” or misidentified burial, or that the soldier was buried elsewhere or was not removed from the field.  The majority of the soldiers buried here (83.5%) are unknown and their identities are lost to history.  Many others were misidentified or labeled with wrong spellings during the reinterment process.  If you think a soldier is buried in the National Cemetery, but they are not listed in the roster, here are some resources that may give you more information about their death and burial:

Adjutant reports: these are compilations of all the basic information of a soldier and their service published for each regiment after the war.  Some states have digitized these records and they are available online; others are available in book form.

Regimental histories: many regiments published unit histories after the war, and many soldiers published memoirs and diaries as well.  Searching through books connected to the unit may reveal stories about your soldier or information about their death and burial.

Service and Pension Records from the National Archives: you may request copies of a soldier’s records from the National Archives.  The Service Records contain all available documentation about a soldier’s service and the Pension Records are the records from cases of family members seeking pensions after the war.

There is a chance that a search for a soldier’s burial place will come to a dead end.  Just like many families during the Civil War, modern researchers often cannot discover what happened to a particular soldier during the war.  In many cases, these resources can lead us to give our best guess about the burial of a soldier, but no concrete conclusions.

 

We are always looking for information connected to the soldiers buried within the cemetery.  If you have pictures, records, or other information about one of our known burials that you are willing to share, please contact Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania NMP.