Although in recent years it has attained some notoriety for its large collection of more than 30,000 Confederate graves, it contains remains of people of all classes and races as well as veterans of every American war.

[3] It holds the largest mass grave of 30,000 Confederates killed in the Siege of Petersburg (1864–65) and other battles during the American Civil War.

The oldest stone, marking the grave of Richard Yarbrough, reads 1702, and some controversy exists as to whether Yarborough was buried in that location, especially since a marker for John Herbert (who died in 1704) was moved from his former home "Puddleduck" in the late 19th century.

Colonel Robert Bolling (who had earlier been authorized to build a tobacco inspection station, indicating the important new trade in the area), Major William Poythress and Captain William Starke contracted with Colonel Thomas Ravenscroft to build a brick church on Well's Hill, which was delayed somewhat by litigation but completed enough to use on August 13, 1737.

Although it never fit the definition of a rural cemetery (and continued its grid plan), its development was effected by that garden and symbol-intensive movement as well as sometimes extreme mourning customs.

In 1854, the city bought 20 acres to expand Blandford Cemetery[10] By the decade's end, Robert Buckner Bolling had constructed a granite and marble mausoleum for his family's dead that aspired to be one of the finest and imposing of its type in the Southern States.

[11] During the American Civil War, not only did Petersburg send many troops to fight in the Confederate States Army, it became a crucial manufacturing, hospital and munitions hub.

Railroads through Petersburg gave the state and Confederate capital at Richmond crucial supplies, so that it became a target late in the conflict.

However, in her memoir, Cullings from the Confederacy: A collection of Southern Poems, Original and Others, Popular during the War Between the States and Incidents and Facts worth recalling, 1862–1865 (1903), she mentions taking 80 pupils on May 26, 1866, to decorate those killed on the day of Petersburg's evacuation.

General Logan also advocated within the Grand Army of the Republic (a very large Union veterans association) calling for the observance of Memorial Day.

[18] The cemetery suffered severe destruction in Hurricane Isabel in 2003, with large and small trees uprooted, and some ironwork and table tombs crushed.