Soldiers' Orphans

These two pictures are of small tombstones and accompanying obelisk in the center of Soldiers Lot, the Union graveyard at Forest Hill Cemetery.

As you can imagine, the Civil War left behind a large number of parentless children, their fathers killed during battle and their mothers either dying themselves or unable to support them. In 1866, the Harvey Hospital located near Spaight and Brearly was transformed from a soldiers' hospital to an orphanage. 683 children lived at The Soldiers' Orphans home over the course of its nine years, it's mission to care for children age 4 to 14 whose fathers had been killed during the Civil War. Eight of the children were buried here, the youngest only four years old and misidentified on the large obelisk.