Three Cemeteries in Danville

Three Cemeteries in Danville, VirginiaThinking on Joan Baez and Virgil Cain and his Danville Railroad got me to thinking about a trip I made a while back to Danville.  I went up there to see Confederate Prison Number 6, which had been a tobacco warehouse before the War and was a hardware store in its most recent incarnation.  Quite a place, to be sure.  Seems like the city's making something of a comeback.  Lots of renovation going on in the tobacco warehouse district at any rate.  I also went see the last White House of the Confederacy — the last place that the Confederate cabinet met with Jefferson Davis.  While I was up there, though, I also stopped by a National Cemetery that was built for United States soldiers who died while imprisoned in Danville.  It's adjacent to two other cemeteries — a traditionally African American cemetery and what I take to be the leading white cemetery for Danville, which unsurprisingly has a Confederate monument.  I took a bunch of pictures of them, which I want to use down the road — but right now what really interests me is the intersection of the cemeteries.  The National Cemetery is in the upper left; the African American Cemetery is on the upper right (to the right of the stone wall surrounding the National Cemetery); the white cemetery is in the foreground.  I'm not familiar with any other conjunction like that elsewhere.

2 Comments

  1. Beau Baez

    Some believe that some of the Confederate treasury is buried in a Danville cemetery, as that was the last place it was officially accounted for.

  2. Alfred L. Brophy

    I'd forgotten about this story. I must say that having seen Danville I'm thinking that's pretty unlikely.

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