Congressional Cemetery

This guide to Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. opens in 1807 with William Swinton, a stonecutter dressing sandstone for the young Capitol, becoming the burial ground's very first interment. Months later a Connecticut senator's death nearby set off a shift in how Congress treated this ground. You'll hear how the Capitol's own architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, later gave the place its distinctive squat stone markers. Listen for how the same hands that shaped the Capitol also shaped what rests in the earth here.