Section 21- The Nurses Memorial– 38.8748348, -77.0748619

Excerpted from the ANC website- The resting place of 653 nurses who heroically served in the U.S. armed forces, Section 21 is sometimes known as the “Nurses Section.” Against a background of evergreens, an 11-foot-tall white Tennessee marble statue appears to gaze reverently upon the deceased nurses that lie before her. Representing “The Spirit of Nursing,” the figure wears simple attire with her hair pinned up, a practical style many early twentieth-century nurses adopted while working. In September 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt received a request that “a suitable and respectable monument be erected to the Unknown Nurse in Arlington Cemetery.” Frances Rich was chosen to design the memorial. Unveiled in 1938, the statue initially honored nurses who died during their service in the Army or Navy. Its meaning has since expanded to include all nurses who served in the U.S. armed forces. In July 1970, Navy Captain Delores Cornelius, deputy director of the Navy Nurse Corps, received authorization to install a bronze plaque over the existing inscription on the Nurses Memorial. The plaque reads, “This monument was erected in 1938 and rededicated in 1971 to commemorate devoted service to country and humanity by Army, Navy and Air Force Nurses.” 

The McClellan Gate– 38.878804, -77.066939

Excerpted from the ANC website- McClellan Gate marks the original entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Named for Civil War General George B. McClellan, the reddish-brown archway remains one of the cemetery’s most iconic landmarks, towering 30 feet above the ground. Atop the arch facing east, the name “McClellan” is inscribed in gold, above lines from Theodore O’Hara’s poem “Bivouac of the Dead” (1847): “On fame’s eternal camping ground their silent tents are spread / And glory guards with solemn round, the bivouac of the dead.” Other lines from the poem are on the west-facing arch: “Rest on embalmed and sainted dead, dear as the blood ye gave / No impious footsteps here shall tread on the herbage of your grave.” Like McClellan, O’Hara fought in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and wrote the poem to honor fallen soldiers from that conflict. However, “Bivouac of the Dead” became most closely associated with the Civil War, as it appeared on both Union and Confederate monuments during the 1860s.

Robert Todd Lincoln’s Grave– Section 31 S-13, 38.877145, -77.0685495

Robert Todd Lincoln was the first child of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln. He was the only one of the President’s children to survive past the age of 18. In February 1865, he was commissioned as an assistant adjutant with the rank of Captain and served in the last weeks of the American Civil War as part of General Ulysses S. Grant’s immediate staff, a position which minimized the likelihood that he would be involved in actual combat. He was present at Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. Two months later he resigned his commission. He accepted an appointment as President James Garfield’s Secretary of War, serving from 1881 to 1885 under Presidents Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. In 1889, he was appointed U.S. minister to England (the Court of St. James) by President Benjamin Harrison, serving until 1893.