Woodlawn National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery within Woodlawn Cemetery, which is in the city of Elmira, in Chemung County, New York. Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, it encompasses, and as of 2014, had over 10,000 interred remains.HistoryIn 1861, Camp Rathbun, near the town of Elmira, was established as a training camp at the beginning of the Civil War. As the Union troops who trained there were sent to their respective assignments, the camp emptied and in 1864 it was turned into the Elmira Prison prisoner-of-war camp. The facilities were not adequate to house the thousands of Confederate prisoners, and many succumbed to exposure, malnutrition, and smallpox and were subsequently interred at the cemetery.Woodlawn National Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.Notable monuments The U.S. government erected the Shohola Monument in 1911 to commemorate a tragic railroad accident that took the lives of both Confederate and Union soldiers during the Civil War in 1864. In 1937, the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument in memory of those Confederate prisoners of war who died while imprisoned in Elmira.
