Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainAn 1866 garden cemetery beside the Washington Confederate Cemetery, where 2,468 Antietam and South Mountain dead lie and ghost hunters report a young woman's apparition.
600 Oak Hill Avenue, Hagerstown, MD 21740
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery; free to visit during posted daylight hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Rolling garden-cemetery grounds with paved drives and grass sections; some uneven and sloped ground.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1866 · Chartered in 1866 as Hagerstown's first race- and religion-neutral burial ground · Laid out in 1867 as a rural/garden cemetery · Adjoins the Washington Confederate Cemetery, burial place of 2,468 Antietam and South Mountain dead · Confederate monument and cemetery dedicated in 1877
Rose Hill Cemetery began on the farmland of Dr. Wroe and his wife Martha, who in late 1865 and early 1866 agreed to sell acreage on what was called Wroe's Hill for a new burial ground. The cemetery's charter and articles of association were signed on March 16, 1866, fixing the name Rose Hill Cemetery of Hagerstown. It was the first place in the city where local residents could be buried regardless of their race or religious preference, a departure from the church and family burial grounds that came before.
In April 1867 the company hired a Baltimore landscape architect, and John Wilkinson laid out a master plan in the rural or garden-cemetery style then in fashion, with curving drives and planted grounds.
The site is best known for the Washington Confederate Cemetery, which adjoins it. The State of Maryland purchased that ground in 1871 for the burial of Confederate dead, and 2,468 soldiers from the Battle of Antietam and the Battle of South Mountain are interred there. A monument nineteen feet high was placed in February 1877, and the Confederate cemetery was formally dedicated on June 15, 1877, with Major General Fitzhugh Lee, a nephew of Robert E. Lee, as the principal speaker.
Together the two grounds make Rose Hill one of the most significant Civil War burial sites in western Maryland, drawing visitors interested in the aftermath of the September 1862 fighting along the South Mountain ridges and at Antietam Creek.
Sources
Rose Hill's reputation for the paranormal grows out of its scale and its Civil War dead. Maryland folklore and ghost-hunting coverage describe the apparition of a young woman seen among the stones, along with the sound of screams and, near the crematorium, the smell of burning hair with no source.
The Civil War angle draws on the adjoining Washington Confederate Cemetery, where thousands of men killed at Antietam and South Mountain were reinterred. Regional accounts fold soldier sightings and battlefield-aftermath activity into the cemetery's lore, in keeping with the way Antietam-area sites are treated more broadly.
These reports are unverified and rest on ghost-hunter and folklore sources rather than documented incidents. Rose Hill remains an active, working cemetery, and the burials it holds, especially the Confederate dead carried here after September 1862, carry their own weight without embellishment. Visitors come for the history first; the lore is a thin overlay on a genuine place of mourning, and it should be encountered with that in mind.
Walk the 1866 garden cemetery and the adjoining Washington Confederate Cemetery, where 2,468 Confederate soldiers from Antietam and South Mountain are buried beneath a monument dedicated in 1877. Visit during daylight hours; this is an active cemetery, not a ghost attraction.
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Atlanta, GA
Historic Oakland Cemetery was chartered in 1850 as the six-acre 'Atlanta Cemetery,' renamed Oakland in 1872, and expanded to 48 acres. Approximately 70,000 people are interred, including roughly 6,900 Confederate soldiers (3,000 unidentified), four Confederate generals, six Georgia governors, 27 Atlanta mayors, Margaret Mitchell, golfer Bobby Jones, and Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first African American mayor. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1976.
Frederick, MD
Mount Olivet Cemetery was established in 1852 as Frederick's garden cemetery, replacing crowded church burial grounds in town. It is the burial place of Francis Scott Key (author of 'The Star-Spangled Banner'), Barbara Fritchie, Maryland's first governor Thomas Johnson, and 408 unknown Confederate soldiers reinterred from area battlefields. The Key monument was dedicated in 1898 and the Confederate monument in 1881.
Forest Park, IL
Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, grew from two adjacent cemeteries — German Waldheim (established 1873) and Forest Home (1876) — which merged in February 1969. The 220-acre site was chosen as a non-denominational burial ground, a policy that made it the only Chicago-area cemetery willing to accept the bodies of the Haymarket defendants in 1887.