The Early Years
Following the American Civil War, and looking to expand, the United States Naval Academy purchased a parcel of land called Strawberry Hill from the Reece Family. The 67 acre tract of land included the 6.7 acres now designated as the Naval Academy Cemetery. The below map shows the peninsula which is now called Hospital Point and indicates that at that time it was owned by Dr. Mackubin.
CAPT Edward Phelps Lull, a Graduate of the US Naval Academy Class of 1855 gives the following account writing in July of 1869:
On a high point of land in this last purchase, has been laid out a Cemetery for the burial of Officers and Seamen and others belonging to the Navy. Beyond the Cemetery there is a handsome Park. The park and cemetery consist of alternate wood and lawn, with considerable diversity of level. Winding woods and paths have been laid out in very tasteful manner, making all parts accessible. So attractive are these two places that although the improvements are scarcely yet begun, they have become a very favorite resort for the people in the vicinity, a large number of persons visiting each, every pleasant day.
Near the top of the hill placed near the predominant Jennet Monument is a memorial dated 1847, twenty-one years before the Naval Academy Cemetery’s foundation. It is a crude cenotaph that in translation reads. “To the Memory of the Americans who perished in this Fort. The Year 1847” This is the oldest monument in the Cemetery, but its story and how it came to be placed does, as it’s date suggest, begin before the Naval Academy Cemetery itself.
During the Battle of Veracruz in 1914 the USS Vestal under the leadership of Commander Edward L. Beach was directed to take control of the dockyard and prison at Fort San Juan de Ulua in Vera Cruz, Mexico. A cemetery was included outside the prison. CAPT Fred E. McMillen, SC, USN, writing for the US Naval institute describes the cemetery and the finding of the stone in this way.
A brownish- yellow waste of rotting bones and coral bleaching in the tropical sun, its utter desolation unrelieved by a single flower or blade of grass, this acre which God had certainly forgot was left to the care of the obscene buzzards (zopilotes) that perched on the crumbling headstones and wooden crosses. At the water’s edge, partly submerged, its inscription almost obliterated by storm and weather, we found a small granite monument which now stands in Memorial Hall at the Naval Academy. The faint lettering, which has since been traced out in black paint, reads, “A la Memoria de Los Americanos que Sucumbieron en Esta Forteleza el Año de 1847,” a mute reminder of that small group of American heroes who found their last resting place on a coral reef behind San Juan de Ulua. Who these men were or who it was that set up the little monument to their memory, naval records do not state..
At some point after the memorial’s finding in 1914 it was brought to the Naval Academy, set in Memorial Hall and found its final placement in the Cemetery overlooking College Creek. Although now far from Fort San Juan de Ulua and centuries removed from the Siege of Veracruz in 1847 the stone reminds of the men that gave their lives in that fort’s defense.
The first documented burial and epitaph would not be placed until 1872. In August of that year, the first burial took place and speaks to the humble beginnings of this place of rest. The burial was for the infant son of then LT Edward William Sturdy, Edward William Sturdy Jr.. His father, a graduate of the Class of 1867 would die at sea in 1898 and is buried in Key West, Florida. Mrs. Sturdy and all three of her and CDR Sturdy’s children are now buried side by side in Section 4, Plot 454 of the Cemetery.
As the years passed, decorated admirals, mess stewards, blacksmiths, sailmakers, bandsmen, midshipmen would join Edward William Sturdy Jr. in finding their final place of rest or memorial on the grounds of the Naval Academy.
With the Naval Academy Cemetery's establishment some families’ loved ones were memorialized or moved to the newly founded cemetery. Nine markers in the cemetery predate the 1868 founding including this cenotaph in Section 6, Plot 1569 dedicated to the memory of Thomas Taylor who drowned in 1852 while serving on the USS Preble, a sloop-of-war. The USS Preble was the first training ship used by the midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
At the time of its founding the Naval Academy Cemetery was not exclusively for the use of her Staff, Students and Alum. As a Naval Cemetery the Academy Cemetery is the final resting place of the crew of the USS Huron. The Huron was an iron sloop-rigged steamer that ran aground on November 24, 1877 during a storm off the coast of North Carolina near Nag’s Head. The ship burial, in Section 5, consists of individual markers for each of the crew members and a group marker of those crew members lost at sea or resting under markers bearing the title “Unknown.”
The largest and most prominent monument in the cemetery sits in Section 2 and is dedicated to the memory of the twenty men who perished in the U.S. Arctic Expedition aboard the USS Jennette. The voyage began on July 8, 1879 when the thirty-three men crew departed San Francisco in search of a passage from the Pacific Ocean to the North Pole through the Bering Strait. The passage proved nonexistent and the crew of the Jenette found themselves trapped for over two years in the frigid arctic conditions until the harsh conditions crushed and sank the ship. While some of the men did return home in October 1881, more than half of the crew never did. The monument was erected in 1890.
Its design is based off the cairn, a mass grave in the form of a mound, that a recovery team built to mark the remains of the explorers in the Arctic. The inscription reads: Commemorative of the heroic officers and men of the United States Navy who perished in the Jeannette Arctic Exploring Expedition. 1881. The icicles hanging from the cross are a visual reminder of the sub zero environment that the crew had to endure.
