John Parke Custis, the son of Martha Washington and her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, purchased 2,000 acres of the Alexander land in 1778. In 1802, John Parke Custis’s son George Washington Parke Custis inherited the plantation, at that time known as Mount Washington, along with a large portion of Martha Washington’s collection of furniture, silver, china and family portraits. George Washington Parke Custis constructed a Greek Revival style mansion on the property, which he named Arlington House. As part of a working plantation, the house was built by African-American slaves, many of whom had been brought to Arlington from George and Martha Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. Construction was completed in 1818, and George Washington Parke Custis displayed many of his inherited “Washington Treasures” throughout the home.
Upon his death in 1857, George Washington Parke Custis bequeathed the Arlington estate – which consisted of the manor, 1,100 acres of land and 196 enslaved men and women – to his daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis. Mary’s husband Robert E. Lee assumed the role of master at the plantation, but Mary remained the owner. Robert and Mary resided at the plantation until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, when Lee left the U.S. Army to serve with the Confederate Army. As a result of the imminent arrival of U.S. troops, in May 1861, Mary and her daughters abandoned Arlington House.
The U.S. Army recognized the strategic importance of acquiring this high ground that directly overlooked Washington, D.C. in order to protect the capital city. On May 23, 1861, the U.S. Army occupied the Arlington property. It used the house as a headquarters and officers’ housing, while soldiers camped around the property. The Army cut down many acres of forest in order to build multiple forts on the land. By 1864, the mounting number of deceased soldiers from battlefields and military hospitals exceeded the capacity of existing national cemeteries in the Washington, D.C. area, so the U.S. government began looking for additional burial space. On May 13, 1864, U.S. Private William Christman became the first soldier buried on the Arlington property. On June 15, 1864, 200 acres of the plantation were officially designated as a military cemetery, formally establishing Arlington National Cemetery.
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery continued for the rest of the Civil War and in the years after it. In spite of the graves that surrounded Arlington House, Robert and Mary Lee's son, George Washington Custis Lee, sued the United States government in 1874 for the return of the Arlington property. In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled that the estate had been illegally confiscated and returned the property to George Washington Custis Lee. To avoid disinterring the 20,000 soldiers already buried in the cemetery, the federal government negotiated with Lee, and on March 31, 1883, he agreed to sell the property to the government for $150,000.
In the years since the Civil War, Arlington National Cemetery expanded multiple times, acquiring land from the National Park Service, Fort Myer, the Syphax family and the former Navy Annex building. These expansions have been necessary to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of veterans interested in being laid to rest at Arlington. Today, the cemetery encompasses 639 acres and is the resting place of approximately 400,000 active duty service members, veterans and their families.
The differences in grave markers reflect Arlington National Cemetery’s history of honoring and caring for the dead over many eras in American history. As you explore the cemetery and observe the many styles and types of grave markers, keep these general points in mind:
