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West Point Cemetery is an historic cemetery on the grounds of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. It overlooks the Hudson River, and served as a burial ground for American Revolutionary War soldiers and early West Point inhabitants long before 1817 when it was officially designated as a military cemetery. Until that time several small burial plots scattered in mid-post served as places of interment. The graves from these plots and the remains subsequently found during building excavations were removed to the new site. An improved road to the cemetery was constructed in 1840, and the caretaker's cottage was erected in 1872.
[edit] Notable interments[1]
- Major Robert Anderson, Union Army officer in command of Fort Sumter at start of Civil War
- Major General Bryant Edward Moore, Korea IX corps,WWII 8th inf div "Blue Devils" "Timberwolves" and Pacific
- Major General Daniel Butterfield, composer of Taps
- General Lucius D. Clay, "Father of the Berlin Airlift"
- Earl "Red" Blaik, Army football head coach 1941–1958, member of the College Football Hall of Fame
- John Milton Brannan, Union army general
- Margaret Corbin, Revolutionary War heroine
- Major General George Armstrong Custer, commander at the Battle of the Little Bighorn
- Maggie Dixon, head women's basketball coach at Army at the time of her unexpected death in 2006
- Major General George Washington Goethals, "Builder of the Panama Canal"
- Major General Frederick Dent Grant, son of President Ulysses S. Grant
- Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Mexican-American War veteran, special advisor to the President during the Civil War
- Brigadier General Ranald S. Mackenzie, Civil War veteran, commander of Buffalo Soldiers during the Indian Wars
- Master Sergeant Martin "Marty" Maher, Jr., Central character in the film The Long Grey Line
- Major General Wesley Merritt, Civil War veteran, Military Governor of the Philippines
- Colonel David "Mickey" Marcus, Israel's first general, only American buried here who died fighting under a foreign flag
- General Alexander Patch, commander of U.S. Seventh Army
- Major General Thomas H. Ruger, Civil War veteran, United States Military Academy Superintendent
- Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, longest serving American general
- Major General George Sykes, Civil War commander
- Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer, United States Military Academy superintendent
- Brigadier General John T. Thompson, inventor of the Thompson submachine gun
- Ensign Dominick Trant, a native of Cork, Ireland and a soldier in the Ninth Massachusetts Infantry, died at West Point in 1782. His is the oldest grave in the cemetery.
- General William Westmoreland, Army Chief of Staff
- Lieutenant Colonel Edward Higgins White, first American to make a spacewalk
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