Woodbine Cemetery
The Soldiers’ Section
During the Civil War, Woodbine Cemetery was Harrisonburg’s principal burial ground. Chartered in March 1850, it opened later that year after the city’s first mayor, Isaac Hardesty, sold 2.5 acres of his property to the cemetery company. The need for additional grave sites for fallen soldiers became clear early in the conflict. Nearby engagements, such as the action in which Confederate Gen. Turner Ashby was killed on June 6, 1862, as well as the Battles of Cross Keys and Port Republic, created fatalities that began to fill the available space. The deaths of wounded soldiers treated at Harrisonburg’s general military hospital after it was established in October 1862 prompted city merchant Samuel Shacklett to donate an adjoining acre for a soldiers’ cemetery.
After the war, Mrs. Juliet Lyle Strayer formed the Ladies’ Memorial Association in June 1868 to tend the graves. Remains buried in Woodbine Cemetery were removed to the Soldiers’ Section, as were those interred elsewhere in Rockingham County. Eventually, about 250 Confederate soldiers, including men from Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Missouri were buried here. Most are unknown. At first wooden headboards marked the raves, but in 1899, the Ladies’ Memorial Association and the Turner Ashby Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy replaced them with marble markers.
In 1876, as the United States celebrated the nation’s Centennial, the Ladies’ Memorial Association erected a 23-foot-high monument here. Praise of the men’s service and a list of battles in the Shenandoah Valley are inscribed on the marble base.
Marker can be reached from the intersection of East Market Street (U.S. 33) and Reservoir Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
