History
Originally a plot within Woodland Cemetery, the first burials took place in 1861. It was designated a National Cemetery on July 24, 1882.
In 1899, without explanation, a lot within Graceland Cemetery was purchased and all the interments were transferred there from the plot in Woodland Cemetery. More modern changes to the cemetery have divided it from Graceland so as to be its own cemetery.
Sometime between 1936 and 1949, a fence dividing Graceland and the National Cemetery was improperly placed. An act of Congress was passed in 1953 (Public Law 116), to rectify the resulting property dispute.
Read more about this topic: Quincy National Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)