Green-Wood Cemetery’s exhibit marks end of Civil War 150 years ago
Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery, last resting place for thousands of Civil War veterans, is opening an exhibit commemorating the 150th anniversary of the end of the nation’s bloodiest conflict.
The exhibit, titled “To Bid You All Good Bye: Civil War Stories,” opens Saturday and runs through July 12 in Green-Wood’s Historic Chapel.
The exhibit uses photographs, letters, artifacts and other items to tell the stories of 19 men and one woman who played a role in the Civil War and are interred among the cemetery’s more than 550,000 burials. Several of them died during the war, including Horatio Howell, a Pennsylvania chaplain who was shot on the steps of a hospital in Gettysburg.
The 478-acre cemetery opened in 1838 in what was then a rural section of Brooklyn. Some of the first New Yorkers to die during the Civil War were brought back home for burial at Green-Wood, including Clarence MacKenzie, a 12-year-old drummer boy who was accidentally shot by a fellow Union soldier soon after the war started in April 1861.