HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY
Richmond, Virginia

Hollywood is a privately owned cemetery and the final resting place of over 18,000 Confederate soldiers from all Southern States, and includes such notables as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, J.E.B Stuart, George Pickett, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and the first Confederate soldier killed during the war, Henry Lawson Wyatt, who was the only Confederate fatality at the battle of Big Bethel.  Hollywood has the largest number of Confederate generals (23) interred anywhere in the world.  In addition to the slain from battles around Richmond such as Seven Pines, Gaines Mill, Malvern Hill, and Cold Harbor, most of the Confederate Dead exhumed from Gettysburg in the 1870s were reinterred here on what became known as Gettysburg Hill.  The Hollywood Cemetery Registry of Confederate Dead, printed in 1869, contains about 10,500 names of the 18,000 soldiers that rest here.  The remaining names (unless they were unknown at the time of burial) and locations were destroyed in a fire at the cemetery office shortly after the war.  Markers to the men whose actual burial location is unknown, such as General Garnett of "Pickett’s Charge" fame, exist in certain locations.

The Pyramid, built as a memorial to the Confederate Dead in 1869 at a cost of $26,000, is 90 feet tall and 45 feet square at the base.  In the cornerstone are entombed various Confederate artifacts including a Confederate flag, a button from Stonewall Jackson's coat, and a lock of Jefferson Davis' hair.

Although thousands of men at Hollywood have no marker at all, this is one of the more beautiful monuments to a Confederate soldier, Charles Harris McPhail.  The enscription reads:

He fell in the battle's front
July 1, 1862
in the 25th year of his age while
gallantly charging the enemy at
MALVERN HILL
A devout and humble Christian
A brave and faithful soldier
He here makes his last bivouac with
thousands of other martyred sons
of the South who sleep around him.

Rest on embalmed and sainted dead
Dear as the blood ye gave
Fear not that impious foot shall tread
The herbage of your grave
Your glory shall not be forgot
While fame her record keeps
Or honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.

This is part of "Gettysburg Hill", where most of the Confederate dead from Gettysburg were reinterred in 1872 and 1873.

I STROLL THE HILLS OF HOLLYWOOD

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