Date published: 7/27/2002

THOMAS STUART GARNETT grew up in Westmoreland County until he left at age 15 for an education at the Virginia Military Institute. Perhaps the Institute's "rat line" displeased him, or the science of medicine called, for after a year in Lexington, young Garnett traveled over the mountains to the University of Virginia and earned a medical degree. At age 21, the newly minted physician went off to serve in the Mexican War.

During the 1850s, Dr. Garnett practiced medicine in Bowling Green. Virginia seceded from the Union on his 35th birthday. For the two years of life left to him, Garnett led Virginia troops, first in the local 9th Virginia Cavalry, and eventually as colonel commanding the 48th Virginia Infantry. At Chancellorsville, Col. Garnett went down with a bullet in his throat. He lived long enough to send home a farewell note that betrayed mordant experience, both military and medical: "I am mortally wounded. I know the nature of these things."

Friendly hands conveyed Garnett's mortal remains to Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery. After the war, a grieving father moved them to a family cemetery in King George County. The stay in Hollywood, however, gave the colonel enough tenure to earn a page in Chris Ferguson's excellent book, "Hollywood Cemetery, Her Forgotten Soldiers: Confederate Field Officers at Rest."

I am easily moved by cemeteries full of Virginians of historical moment. Manicured grounds also please my aesthetic sense mightily (despite the haunting memory they conjure up of maladroit golfing ventures in such settings). Hollywood Cemetery surely stands at the top of any list of either of those considerations; combined, it must be unchallenged. Winchester's Stonewall Cemetery and Lexington's Stonewall Jackson Cemetery are full of interesting and important people, but they cannot match the range of Hollywood's inhabitants, nor the grandeur of Hollywood's grounds.

A collection of Richmonders established Hollywood Cemetery in 1847. An initial design for a grandiose, even flamboyant, setting proved too expensive. The directors settled instead for a more pastoral scheme. Their landscape architect spread winding roads across a rolling plateau above the falls of James River.

The cemetery's profile gained a tremendous boost when President James Monroe's coffin was moved to Hollywood from New York in 1858. The ornate ironwork monument above his grave (critics called it "the birdcage") remains today one of the most impressive sights on the grounds.

Ferguson's book is not concerned with the presidents (Monroe, Tyler, and Davis), the governors (six of them from terms before 1910), the two dozen Confederate generals (including J.E.B. Stuart), or the vast array of other notables--who include historian Douglas Southall Freeman, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Fredericksburg's own Matthew Fontaine Maury. His subject is the next-lower tier of military men from the 1860s, field-grade officers, ranking major through colonel.

Date published: 7/27/2002