Wikipedia
Antietam National Cemetery, covers 11.36 acres (4.60 ha) and contains more than 4,976 interments (1,836 unidentified), adjoins the park. The cemetery was commissioned in 1865 and interments begun in 1867 after an arduous process of identifying the dead, which was successful in only about 40% of cases. Civil War era burials in this cemetery consist of only Union soldiers; Confederate dead were interred in the Washington Confederate Cemetery, Hagerstown, Maryland; Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland; and Elmwood Cemetery in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The cemetery also contains the graves of veterans and their wives from the Spanish–American War, World War I and II, and the Korean War. The cemetery was closed to additional interments in 1953. Two exceptions have been made, the first in 1978 for Congressman Goodloe Byron and the second in 2000 for the remains of USN Fireman Patrick Howard Roy who was killed in the attack on the USS Cole. The cemetery was placed under the War Department on July 14, 1870; it was transferred to the National Park Service on August 10, 1933. The gatehouse at the cemetery's entrance was the first building designed by Paul J. Pelz, later architect of the Library of Congress.