Arlington National Cemetery Launches Burial Database

By | November 1, 2012

Arlington National Cemetery has unveiled a public database of the 400,000 burials there.

Called ANC Explorer, the database is available online and as a Mobile app. You can search it to locate gravesites on a map; get details including birth, death and interment dates, and branch of service; generate front and back photos of a headstone or monument (where available); and get directions to those gravesites.

Building it led to the first review, analysis and coordination of almost 150 years of Arlington Cemetery records. The Army photographed 259,978 gravesites, niches and markers and instituted a rigorous process to review each headstone photo with cemetery records and other historical documents. The effort grew out of reports in 2010 of misidentified graves and poorly kept records at the cemetery.

Arlington National Cemetery was established during the Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, once the estate of the family of Martha Custis Lee, wife of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Veterans and family members from the Civil War and every subsequent US war are buried on its 624 acres.

The first soldier buried there is Pvt. William Henry Christman of Pennsylvania, on May 13, 1864.