Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery


Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery is an American military cemetery located in St. Louis County, Missouri, just on the banks of the Mississippi River. The cemetery was established after the American Civil War in an attempt to put together a formal network of military cemeteries. It started as the Jefferson Barracks Military Post Cemetery in 1826 and became a United States National Cemetery in 1866.
The first known burial was Elizabeth Ann Lash, the infant child of an officer stationed at Jefferson Barracks.
The cemetery is administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs on the former site of Jefferson Barracks. It covers and the number of interments as of 2021 is approximately 237,000. The cemetery is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Notable interments

Medal of Honor recipients

Other notable individuals

Memorial to the Confederate Dead

A monument entitled Memorial to the Confederate Dead was placed in Jefferson Barracks on May 1, 1988 It is located in section 66 of the cemetery. Not to be confused with the removed Memorial to the Confederate Dead (St. Louis).
It was placed by the Jefferson Barracks Civil War Historical Association, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Missouri Society Military Order of the Stars and Bars.
The front of the monument features three Confederate flags: the first national flag, the Confederate Battle Flag, and the last national flag.
Under the flags is a quote by Berry Benson:

56th United States Colored Infantry Monument

A monument dedicated to the 56th United States Colored Infantry Regiment was erected on May 19th, 1939 following the re-interment of 175 officers and soldiers at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in a mass grave. The men had originally been buried at a cemetery at the former Koch Quarantine Hospital in St. Louis during a cholera outbreak in 1866, but were moved when the local community petitioned to have the soldiers be re-interred. The original stone obelisk monument that was erected at Koch Quarantine Hospital bore a brief inscription:
The War Department claimed that the names of the unknown soldiers would be placed on the monument when their names were discovered.
In August of 2014, the St. Louis African American History and Genealogy Society and Sarah Cato successfully petitioned to add a bronze marker with the names of all 175 men to the monument, in addition to the names of the men that were lost along the Mississippi river and whose bodies are unable to be recovered.
The inscription of the bronze marker reads:

The Minnesota Monument

Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery is also home to one of the seven Minnesota Monuments commissioned by the State of Minnesota to commemorate soldiers from the state that died during the Civil War. The monument, built in 1922 and designed by sculptor John K. Daniels, depicts a bronze woman with a wreath below her waist on top of a granite stone.