Battle of Fredericksburg • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • Armies
The Willis Hill Cemetery wayside marker is at Stop One on the Fredericksburg battlefield Auto Tour. It is along the Marye’s Heights Trail. (see map below)
In the First Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, the cemetery’s brick walls provided partial shelter for the ammunition and battery horses of Captain Charles W. Squires’ Washington Artillery, who placed two rifled artillery pieces in gun pits in roughly this location during the December battle.
During the Second Battle of Fredericksburg on May 3, 1863, Squires and his Washington Artillery returned to Willis Hill. This time the odds were very different, and after a savage fight Union troops succeeded in taking the hills that had defied them in December. Squires and six guns of his battery were overrun and captured – the first guns the Washington Artillery lost in the Civil War.
“There is a private cemetery on the crest, surrounded by a brick wall. Burnside’s artillery had not spared it. I looked over the wall, which was badly smashed in places, and saw the overthrown monuments and broken tombstones lying on the ground.”
John T. Trowbridge, 1865
This quiet hilltop graveyard, dating to the mid-eighteenth century, sheltered Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Medical personnel treated wounded soldiers behind its walls, and at least one Southern regiment paused here before charging down the hill into the Sunken Road.
By the time the battle had ended, the cemetery was a wreck. Union artillery had scoured the hill, toppling the cemetery’s red brick walls and shattering its headstones. Although the damage was later repaired, the scarred marble gateposts stand as reminders of the fury that once engulfed this peaceful spot.
From the caption to the inset photo on the left:
The Willis Hill Cemetery is faintly visible in the background of this 1863 photograph taken from the Fredericksburg city waterfront.
From the caption in the center:
The graveyard is the final resting place for members of the Carmichael, Willis, and Wellford families.
From the caption in the lower right:
George Washington’s nephew Major George W. Lewis (above) is buried here, as is Dr. Robert Wellford (left ), surgeon general of the United States Army during the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.
Old Family Cemetery – Willis Hill
Location of the marker
The marker is along a branch of the Marye’s Heights Trail the heads West from the main trail to the walled private cemetery.A sign on the main trail points to the Willis Cemetery. The marker is about two thirds of the way back.