![\"800px-Arlington_House\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/800px-Arlington_House-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nOn June 15th, 1864, Congress approved the use of Robert E. Lee’s estate, which overlooked the city of Washington, as a national cemetery. So began 150 of history being buried beneath those grounds. The Stars and Stripes has written a couple of articles about the history of the plantation. For example, they tell about Jim Parks<\/a> who had been a farm hand in the days before the Civil War, and a historian in his final days;<\/p>\n Parks, who lived until 1929, never left the plantation. First he helped build forts, and when the cemetery opened, he became a grave digger. He retired in 1925, the same year that Congress responded to strong public interest in the historic house and passed legislation for its restoration.<\/p>\n The following year, he showed a local reporter where “coffins had been piled in long rows like cordwood” as the war progressed. He even prepared the grave for Meigs, the man who had ordered the conversion of the estate to a military cemetery.<\/p>\n Parks took researchers on a tour of the grounds surrounding the mansion, pointing out exact locations for forgotten “wells, springs, slave quarters, slave cemetery, dance pavilion, old roads, ice houses and kitchens,” according to the National Park Service.<\/p>\n When Parks died, he was buried in the cemetery where he had worked for more than 60 years. He was given full military honors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When I took my grand-daughter to Arlington when she was still in grade school, she read that sign above and announced that she wouldn’t be continuing on our trip because she read the line “most sacred shrine” as “most scared shrine” so Grampa had to explain it to her.<\/p>\n In another Stars & Stripes<\/a> article they tell about the permanent residents of the cemetery who aren’t limited to a single social demographic;<\/p>\n The cemetery serves a resting place for service members from every conflict in U.S. history, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers from the American Revolution were reinterred at Arlington after their gravesites were displaced by a development project in Georgetown.<\/p>\n In addition to U.S. presidents, others buried here include Supreme Court justices, astronauts, war heroes, sports figures and celebrities, including baseball inventor Abner Doubleday, boxer Joe Louis and actor Lee Marvin. All three were veterans.<\/p>\n “There are 400,000 individuals with all these incredible stories,” Carney said. “If you want to play historical sleuth, you can just pick a name on a headstone, and everyone has an incredible story.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Arlington_National_Cemetery\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Arlington_National_Cemetery-300x225.jpg\")
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