Edmund Burke Whitman
American Superintendent of National cemeteries
Edmund Burke Whitman (October 18, 1812 – September 2, 1883) was a quartermaster during the American Civil War. After the war he was Superintendent of National Cemeteries where he developed the principles for the selection of new United States National Cemetery sites in April 1869. His principles specified that a site should be of historical interest, and it should have convenient access for visitors. He and his team of United States Colored Troops (USCT) located more than 100,000 bodies of Union fallen in the Southern U.S. Most of the information was given to him by the African American inhabitants, as the white populace was often hostile to his efforts.
Biography
He was born in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, on October 18, 1812, to Alfred Whitman and Betsey Robbins. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Harvard University in 1838.
On August 30, 1839, he married Nancy Russell in Kingston, Massachusetts. They had four children: Amelia Whitman (1840–?), Alfred Whitman (1841–?), Russell Whitman (1844–?), and James Whitman (1847–?). Nancy died around 1854 or 1855. In 1855 the family moved to Lawrence, Kansas.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5339338. VIAF identifies the subject as 68857969. The Library of Congress control number is nr2001021722. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1812, 1883, 1869 and 1838.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edmund Burke Whitman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.