Brownsville: Brownsville City Cemetery

Driveway entrance with narrative marker that says Brownsville City Cemetery
Cemetery plots and monuments very close together
Grave markers inside a wrought iron fence
Nurses wearing face masks seated at a table full of face masks

Nurses in Boston responding to the first cases of influenza in the U.S. at the end of World War I (Library of Congress)

Patients in beds separated by sheet curtains on a covered, screened porch

Influenza ward for WWI soldiers

Large room full of cots with sick people, doctors, and nurses

(Library of Congress)

Image of woman in a face mask labeled “To Prevent Influenza!”

(Library of Congress)

Dating back to 1853, this cemetery is a trip back in time. Here you can walk along the gravestones and mausoleums, and see the final resting places of soldiers, gunfight victims, and casualties of the city’s many disease outbreaks, like yellow fever and cholera.

But no epidemic was more deadly than the Spanish Influenza of 1918, which ultimately killed more American soldiers than enemy weapons.

Brownsville City Cemetery

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