Genealogy at City Point National Cemetery in Hopewell, Virginia

Last week we helped a couple who were traveling from Maine to find the burial site of a great-grandfather who served as a doctor in the Civil War. They knew he was buried in “City Point, VA” because the family had a marker in remembrance back in Maine inscribed with “buried in City Point, VA.”

I showed them a map and we decided he was most likely buried at City Point National Cemetery here in Hopewell, which as most locals know was once called “City Point” in history.
Little did they realize there are thousands of graves at City Point National Cemetery, so I did a quick Google search to find a website I used in college on a project I though was called find-a-grave.

We were all happy to find that I had remember the right website and with just a few clicks I found an image of their ancestor’s grave stone! The coolest thing about Find A Grave.com is that random people contribute to the information about the person you’re looking for as they do their own research so you can find out a lot of history about ancestors you’re searching for!

For this family, we learned he and his son both served at City Point for a very short time, during the period which Grant and Lincoln made a point to shake the hand of every man wounded in the nearest field hospital. Fortunately the son made it home, and that was a very somber realization for the couple, because had the son died there with his father they would not be alive today.

On a personal note, I followed my maternal grandparent’s family back to before the civil war on the website and learned about a scandalous marriage! SO COOL!

I’ll link the website below for you to search though, let us know what you find!
 
Find A Grave.com