The Grave of William Howard Taft

 

One of the notables buried at Arlington is William Howard Taft (1857 – 1930), the 27^th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States.  Taft is the only person to have served in both offices.  Taft and John F. Kennedy are the only U.S. Presidents buried at Arlington.

 

Taft is not only one of two presidents buried at Arlington National Cemetery, he is also one of four Chief Justices buried there (the others are Earl Warren, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist). Taft was the first president to throw out the baseball at a season opener, in a game between the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics in 1910. Taft's wife, Helen Herron Taft, who died in 1943, was instrumental in bringing Japanese cherry trees to Washington, D.C.  A fourteen foot tall granite monument, inspired by ancient Greek burial steles, marks the graves of Taft and his wife. Mrs. Taft arranged with James Earl Frazer, a New York sculptor, to design this private monument for the grave. The design was approved by the Commission of Fine Arts and the secretary of war. It was erected by the Taft family in early 1932.

How Sherlock Holmes Lived

Arlington House and Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington House

     George Washington Parke Custis, aged three, inherited eleven hundred acres of land overlooking the Potomac River, when his father, the stepson of General George Washington, died in 1781.  Young “Wash” and his sister “Nelly” were raised at Mount Vernon by George and Martha Washington.  Upon reaching legal age in 1802, the young man began building a lavish house on a high hill overlooking the Potomac which was to be not only his house but a living memorial to George Washington (who died in 1799).  Originally the name “Mount Washington” was considered for the house, but in the end it was named after the Custis family estate in the Virginia tidewater area and became known as “Arlington House”.  The house took sixteen years to complete.

    Custis married and had one daughter, Mary.  Mary Custis, one of wealthiest heiresses in Virginia, fell in love with a penniless soldier, Robert E. Lee.  Although Lee came from a prominent family, at the time of his birth there was no family fortune left.  Lee had only his army pay and his person to offer a bride.  One afternoon, while taking a break from reading aloud from a novel by Sir Walter Scott, Lee proposed to Mary.  Mary’s father reluctantly agreed to the marriage.


     In 1857 Custis died.  His will allowed Mary to live in and control Arlington House for the duration of her life, at which point the house would pass to her eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee.  Mary and Robert E. Lee lived in Arlington House until 1861 when Virginia seceded from the Union and Lee went south to join the Confederate army.


     Union troops moved into Virginia in May, 1861, immediately taking up positions around Arlington House.  Two forts were built on the estate including Fort Whipple (now Fort Myer) and Fort McPherson.  The property was confiscated by the federal government when property taxes were not paid in person by Mrs. Lee. The property was offered for public sale Jan. 11, 1864, and was purchased by a tax commissioner for "government use, for war, military, charitable and educational purposes." More than 1,100 freed slaves were given land around the house, where they farmed and lived during and after the Civil War.
                                                        

     At this point Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs, commander of the garrison at Arlington House (and Quartermaster General of the Union Army) enters the picture.  Meigs and Lee had served together many years earlier as military engineers on the Mississippi River.  Lee was a 1^st Lieutenant and Meigs his subordinate, a 2^nd Lieutenant.  Did Meigs bear Lee a personal grudge?  Some historians think so, or perhaps he was just embittered by the war itself, or by Lee’s defection from the Union army.  In any event, tasked with finding additional burial grounds for battle casualties, on June 15, 1864, Meigs wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that “the grounds about the mansion are admirably suited to such a use.” Meigs himself reported his “grim satisfaction” of ordering twenty six Union dead to be buried near Mrs. Lee’s rose garden in June, 1864.  Meigs had graves dug right up to the entrance to the house.  The entire Rose Garden was dug up and the remains of some 1800 soldiers recovered from the Manassas Battlefields buried there in a huge burial vault.  Such an unusual positioning of graves was malicious.  Meigs intention appeared to be to prevent the Lee family from ever again inhabiting the house.  By the time the Civil War ended, more than 16,000 Union soldiers were buried on the grounds of the estate.  Ironically, Meig’s own son, John,  was killed in October 1864 and sent to Arlington Cemetery for burial.  

                                                 The Grave of John Meigs        



     Neither Robert E. Lee nor his wife ever set foot in Arlington House again. General Lee died in 1870.  Mary Custis Lee visited the grounds shortly before her death in 1873, but was overcome by emotion and unable to go inside the house.  After the death of his parents, George Washington Custis Lee claimed that the house and land had been illegally confiscated and that, according to his grandfather's will, he was the legal owner. In December 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, returned the property to George Washington Custis Lee, stating that it had been confiscated without due process.

Would the dead have to be transferred to a new site?  General Lee's son diffused the crisis by selling the house and land to the government for its’ fair market value.

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

Paperback Edition

Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious, forbidding, and dangerous.  The Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.  What were these people looking for?  Is it possible that these mountains hide a vast treasure?  Is it possible that UFOs land here?  Is it possible that in these mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard Men?  Join us as we recount a fictional story of the Superstitions and then look at the real history of the legends that haunt these mountains in our new book:  Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 1921

On March 4, 1921, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American serviceman from World War I at Arlington National Cemetery. A highly decorated soldier, Sgt. Edward F. Younger, selected from four identical caskets. The World War I Unknown lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda prior to burial at Arlington National Cemetery.  On Armistice Day, November 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding presided over the interment ceremonies. 

Even in 1921 the intention had been to place a superstructure atop the Tomb, but it was not until 1926 that Congress authorized the necessary funds for completion of the Tomb.  Architect Lorimer Rich and sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones won a design competition for a tomb that would consist of seven pieces of marble in four levels (cap, die, base and sub-base.)  The “die” is the large central block with sculpting on all four sides. By September, 1931 all seven blocks of marble were at the Tomb site. By the end of December 1931, the assembly was completed.  Carvings on the central block under the direction of the sculptor Thomas Jones started thereafter. The Tomb was completed in April, 1932.

Installation of the sarcophagus for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Tomb sarcophagus was dedicated on April 9, 1932.  The marble sarcophagus weighs seventy nine tons and is inscribed, “Here Lies in Honored Glory – An American Soldier – Known But to God”.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

The Remeum: The Remey Mausoleum

Remains of the Remeum

The “Remeum” was a huge family mausoleum erected, on land belonging to Pohick Church in Lorton Virginia, by controversial Baha’i faith leader, Charles Mason Remey. The Remeum was constructed over a twenty year period (1937-1958) until a disagreement between the Pohick Church and Remey resulted in legal action.  The mausoleum was designed by Charles Remey as a memorial to his family’s contributions to America.  According to the Washington Evening Star and Daily News of April 9, 1973, the mausoleum was planned as a “magnificent complex of walled courtyards, underground chambers with soaring vaulted ceilings, marble reliefs and statues, carved pillars, chapels and burial vaults.” Remey devoted most of his fortune to building this burial complex.  Some two million bricks were used in its construction.  Remey planned to build a huge three story structure above the underground mausoleum which would have dwarfed Pohick Church.

The completed sections of the Remeum complex included outer courtyards, an atrium, and the underground mausoleum. Costing millions of dollars, the complex featured bas reliefs and sculptures by the famous American sculptor Felix de Weldon, who created the iconic flag-raising Iwo Jima U.S. Marine Corps memorial located in Rossyln, Virginia. There were also sculptures by other artists decorating the various tombs, alcoves, and hallways of the gargantuan structure. Historic events in which the Remey family participated, from the landing of the Pilgrims to Pearl Harbor, were depicted.  Two massive sleeping lions sculpted by Felix de Weldon guarded the entrance to the mausoleum.  Inside the memorial chapel were life size statues depicting “Faith”, and “Charity.”   Another series of carved reliefs illustrated the lives of saints. The complex was lit by electric chandeliers, had an extensive ventilation system, and plumbing.

Unguarded in what was then rural Virginia, the Remeum was frequently vandalized.  Hundreds of vandals defaced the complex over the years.  Fragments of smashed marble reliefs and statues littered the floors.  Discarded beer cans and whiskey bottles were mixed with broken funeral urns and the ashes of the dead.  Statues too large to steal were chipped or painted.  With construction halted, Remey relinquished all rights to the Pohick Church in 1968. Remey was given five years to remove anything of value from the mausoleum.  Remey’s brother-in-law, a navy Admiral,  transferred the remains of fifteen family members to Pompey, New York.  Remey’s wife Gertrude was reinterred in the Pohick Church Cemetery.  The marker over her grave appears to be a marble plaque from the Remeum.  The complex was dismantled over a period of ten years, being finally bulldozed over in 1983.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia’s cemeteries are time capsules reflecting the region’s 350 years of history. They offer a glimpse into the lives and fortunes of the famous, the infamous, and those who are remembered for loving their families, tending to their business, and quietly supporting their communities. There are some 1,000 cemeteries in Northern Virginia, ranging from small family plots to huge national cemeteries covering hundreds of acres. This book presents the history of the region through the medium of cemeteries. Every gravestone has a story to tell. Confederate raiders, freedmen, eccentrics, and nation builders lived and died in Northern Virginia. Sometimes, tombstones are all that remain of their stories. Often, finding their tombstones is the first step in rediscovering the stories of these figures.

Gifts for Dogs

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

Edward Dickinson Baker. The only U.S. Senator ever to die in battle.

Edward Dickinson Baker (1811 – 1861) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois and later as a U.S. Senator from Oregon.  He was a long-time friend of President Lincoln.  Baker served during both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War.  On October 21, at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, he was struck by a volley of bullets that killed him instantly. Lincoln cried when he received the news of Baker’s death. At Baker’s funeral, Mary Todd Lincoln scandalized Washington by appearing in lilac rather than the traditional black.  Col. Edward D. Baker is buried in San Francisco.  This memorial stone was placed at Ball’s Bluff to mark the spot of Baker’s death, and to honor the memory of the only sitting U.S. Senator to have ever died on the field of battle. Baker once said, “The officer who dies with his men will never be harshly judged.”

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

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Balls Bluff National Cemetery

In October, 1861, Union forces tried to cross the Potomac River near Leesburg, Virginia and were disastrously repulsed on the steep cliffs at a place called Ball’s Bluff.  Many fleeing Union soldiers were forced into the Potomac River, where they drowned.  Bodies of Union soldiers floated down the Potomac and washed up in Washington, demoralizing Northerners.

Most of the fallen Union soldiers found on or near the battlefield were buried in shallow, mass graves.  In 1865, the Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania tried to have Pennsylvania’s dead returned home.  Four years after the war, however, individual remains could not be identified, so the U.S. Army decided to establish a cemetery here for the Union dead.

Twenty five graves here in one of America’s smallest national cemeteries contain the partial remains of 54 Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on October 21, 1861.  All are unidentified Union soldiers, except Pvt. James Allen of Northbridge, Massachusetts, who served with the 15^th Massachusetts Infantry.

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

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Cemetery Iconography

     Matters of life and death converge at a cemetery.  In death, the everyday distinctions of race, class and religion disappear.  Cemeteries are where the rich and poor, the young and the old, the famous and the not-so-famous come together in the end.

     Those who conceived the idea of the modern cemetery anticipated the movement for public parks.  Cemeteries provided the public with beautiful outdoor gathering spaces during a time when parks were scarce. Out of the movement to beautify cemeteries arose a custom of gathering in these new public spaces. Families picnicked near gravesites, and children played there. Somewhere along the way, this practice fell by the wayside.  The appreciation of cemeteries has made a comeback in the digital age.  Many genealogists have been using the Internet and GPS systems to locate the graves of long lost ancestors.  This renewed interest in cemeteries has spread to an interest in photographing tombstones, the growth of in-depth historical research, and even cemetery tourism.

     Historic cemeteries are a treasure trove of art, biography and philosophy, one’s last chance to shout out to posterity “This is who I was, this is what was important to me”.  Art, symbols and inscriptions are called upon to succinctly capture the essence of life in a beautiful and meaningful way.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia