Grafton National Cemetery

Grafton National Cemetery was established in eighteen sixty-seven to gather the Civil War dead of the West Virginia mountains into one place. Within two years, twelve hundred and fifty-one Union and Confederate soldiers had been reinterred here on a steep hillside in Taylor County, more than six hundred of them unknown. West Virginia's first governor dedicated the cemetery in June of eighteen sixty-eight, and the ceremony that day helped establish the Memorial Day tradition in this part of the country.

Among the buried is Private Thornesberry Bailey Brown, believed to be the first Union soldier killed in the entire war. His death came in May of eighteen sixty-one, before the major battles had even begun. The cemetery today holds more than two thousand veterans, its terraced rows climbing the hillside in quiet order.