About

Blandford Church is a rare American treasure. It is one of the few churches whose decorative stained-glass windows were designed and installed under the direction of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

A guided tour of the Church reveals its history as an 18th century Anglican house of worship, its eventual abandonment and fall into disrepair, its use as a field hospital during the Siege of Petersburg, and its restoration.

Blandford Cemetery, one of the oldest and largest in America, is resting place of veterans and many others who are part of the region's history. A tour includes monuments and tombs, and funerary art representing outstanding examples of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth-century gravestones, sculptures and decorative iron fences.

America's Memorial Day Holiday was inspired by events at Blandford Church & Cemetery. Mary Logan, wife of Union Commander General John Logan, witnessed a group of schoolgirls placing flowers on the graves of soldiers. Deeply moved when she saw the ritual repeated the next year, she related the story to her husband, who took steps that ultimately led to the observance of Memorial Day as a national holiday.