The Cemetery at Fort Pulaski

Tombstone of Robert Rowan. He passed away prior to the construction of Fort Pulaski.

NPS/J. Irving

Quick Facts

Location:

Cockspur Island

The cemetery at Fort Pulaski serves as the final resting place for a diverse group of individuals, including workers, families, and soldiers. It is a shared ground where both United States and Confederate soldiers lie alongside those who contributed to the construction of the fort and supported the troops stationed there.

Following the Civil War, the U.S. Army relocated the remains of Union soldiers to Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina. However, the bodies of Confederate soldiers remain at Fort Pulaski. Notably, there are thirteen unmarked graves that hold the remains of Confederate officers known as the "Immortal 600." These officers were imprisoned at Fort Pulaski from October 1864 to March 1865.

Captain Henry C. Dickinson, one of The Immortal Six Hundred, described the location of the cemetery in his diary:

“Lieutenant Birney, of the Forty-ninth Georgia Infantry, died at the hospital last night and was buried today. Three of our number attended his remains to the grave. A military escort was furnished by the Yanks and he was decently interred in the Confederate graveyard, just at the northwest corner of the fort.”

Two tombstones are still visible today. One belongs to Charles Howard Sellmer, the infant son of Lieutenant Charles Sellmer and Marion Sellmer, who was stationed at Fort Pulaski in 1872. The other tombstone marks the grave of Lieutenant Robert Rowan, an officer who served at Fort Greene (the predecessor to Fort Pulaski. This tombstone was relocated from the original site of Fort Greene to its current location sometime after Rowan's death, in 1800, and before the Civil War.