Marshall, assistant quartermaster, The first superintendent of the national cemetery at Memphis was John F. Carl, a discharged corporal of Company A, Fourth Regiment of Artillery, who was appointed on 6 August 1867.

The city of Memphis, once it had come under control of Union forces, furnished a convenient location for military hospitals to care for a portion of the wounded and sick from the Mississippi River area of combat.

These hospitals, though better staffed and organized that some of the Civil War facilities, nonetheless had a high death rate among the wounded and ill committed to their care.

[1] Visitors to Memphis National Cemetery will note several areas, especially in sections A, B, C, D, E, H, J, and K, wherein are government headstones and markers bearing no name.

Some five hundred and thirty-seven Civil War regiments are represented among the honored dead interred here at Memphis National Cemetery.

The Cemetery does now have a Columbarium for the initial and subsequent interment of cremated remains of member of the Armed Forces of the United States whose last active service terminated honorably, and for their eligible dependents.

On the night of April 26, 1865, the steamboat Sultana, overloaded with Union soldiers who had recently been liberated from Confederate POW camps, exploded due to a boiler rupture on the Mississippi River several miles north of Memphis.