Just a test of the Geotag feature, but, while I’m here… this section of land was used for burying both Union and Confederate dead who usually died while in the Confederate hospital that I just mentioned in the last post. The Union dead were later removed to the National Cemetery just to the east, and on the edge of town. That said, however, I suspect that there may still be Union dead buried in this section. It’s also interesting how some think that their Confederate ancestors, having died in Staunton, were buried in the National Cemetery, when, in fact, they were likely buried here. You see no headstones, because they are all gone now. While wooden headboards were likely used for some of the graves initially, in 1870, the Augusta Memorial Association took steps to make all of the graves in a curious way, enclosing the section “with handsome iron posts and marking… the graves with tags.” Yes, tags. Those tags are long since gone, and if you were to look for a specific grave, you likely won’t find it. They are names on a log now, but they are buried here. The monument that you see in the background was erected in 1888.
See this link to the site in the HMDb for more information about the monument.
For more information about these CW sites and more in Augusta County, Virginia, see my book, Gibraltar of the Shenandoah: Civil War Sites and Stories of Staunton, Waynesboro, and Augusta County, Virginia (2004).
*End of Geotag testing for today
Cenantua's Blog 
Harry Smeltzer
October 2, 2010
‘Splain it to me, Lucy! What’s geotagging?
Robert Moore
October 2, 2010
Can’t quite “splain” it to myself yet: Hope to figure it out when I get “out of the field”