THE ROSE GARDEN at ARLINGTON HOUSE ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY by George W
THE ROSE GARDEN AT ARLINGTON HOUSE ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY By George W. Dodge The Garden's First Burial Captain Albert H. Packard, Company I, 31st Maine Infantry; Company G, 19th Maine Infantry The first soldier buried alongside the Rose Garden at Arlington House, home of Robert E. Lee and his family for thirty years before the Civil War, was Captain Albert Packard of the 31st Maine Infantry. According to cemetery burial records, Captain Packard is the first officer and the first soldier from a Maine regiment buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Packard, the twenty-fourth burial at Arlington, was buried on Tuesday May 17, 1864, the fifth day of burials there. 1 On August 25, 1862, Albert Packard, age thirty, departed from his wife, two children and mechanic's job to enroll in the 19th Maine. 2 After four weeks of training in Maine, Packard and his regiment arrived in Washington, D.C. on August 29, 1862. On October 16, 1862, while on a reconnaissance at Charlestown, Virginia [now West Virginia] the regiment came under gun · fire for the first time. 3 By October 31, 1862, Packard was a corporal in Company G. His duties included that of color bearer. 4 Following a winter of camp, drill and illness, Packard was among the 440 members of the 19th Maine who marched north and were engaged at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1-3, 1863. Packard's regiment sustained over 45 percent casualties at Gettysburg, 68 killed or mortally wounded, 127 wounded and 4 missing.5 In February 1864, Packard returned to Maine to recruit soldiers for a new regiment, the 31st Maine.
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