Arlington National Cemetery opened in 1864 during the Civil War as the final resting place for American soldiers who died defending the union. Today, there are 400,000 military veterans and their eligible dependents at the cemetery. And while the overwhelming majority of those interred at Arlington are men who served in the military, there are also numerous notable women – some of them famous. (Arlington takes first place among America’s largest military cemeteries.)
To find the women who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, 24/7 Tempo consulted the websites of Arlington National Cemetery and the National Women’s History Museum, as well as such media sources as the Washington Examiner, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.
The women whose final resting place is at Arlington include those who served in the military, as well as nurses, astronauts, codebreakers, suffragists, mathematicians, journalists, actresses, first ladies, and a Supreme Court justice.
Among those buried in the cemetery are military pioneers such as Jeanne M. Holm, the first woman to serve as a major general in the U.S. armed forces and Barbara Allen Rainey, the first woman pilot in the Navy.
Ruby Bradley and Juanita Hipps were hero nurses who served the American military during World War II. Jane Delano, a relative of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a nurse and founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service.
Among the notable Black women interred at Arlington are Hazel W. Johnson-Brown, the first female African-American general in the U.S. Army, and Namahyoke Curtis, who recruited black nurses to serve the wounded during the Spanish-American War. (These are 36 Black women who changed American history.)
Click here to learn about the 45 women buried at Arlington National Cemetery
Other women of note at rest in Arlington include Christa McAuliffe and Judith Resnick, who died in the Challenger tragedy; Vinne Ream, who designed a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda; Elizabeth Smith Friedman, a female codebreaker; Helen Hamilton Gardener, a civil service commissioner and suffragist; Grace Hopper, a rear admiral who was a pioneer in developing computer technology; Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins; famed actress Maureen O’Hara; iconic former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court justice and liberal hero.
Allie G. Harshaw (1918-2013)
> Known as: First Black female Air Force master sergeant to retire with 30 years of military service
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Anita Newcomb McGee (1864-1940)
> Known as: First female surgeon in the U.S. Army
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Anna Etheridge Hooks (1839-1913)
> Known as: Nurse who served in 32 battles during the Civil War
Barbara Allen Rainey (1948-1982)
> Known as: First woman pilot in the Navy (killed in an aircraft accident in 1982)
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Beatrice V. Ball (1902-1963)
> Known as: Senior officer in SPAR, the U.S. Coast Guard women’s reserve
Betty Jane Williams (1919-2008)
> Known as: Engineering test pilot in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in WWII
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Carol H. Arndt (1919-1980)
> Known as: Journalist and women’s editor of Army Times; interred with her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Edward J. Arndt, U.S. Navy
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Phyllis Kirk (1927-2006)
> Known as: Noted 1950s-era actress; interred with husband, producer Warren Bush, who served in the Army Air Forces during World War II
Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986)
> Known as: First teacher in space; killed in the Challenger tragedy in 1986
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Constance Bennett (1904-1965)
> Known as: Noted actress in 1930s and ’40s; interred with her husband, Brig. Gen. Theron John Coulter, U.S. Air Force
Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892-1980)
> Known as: One of the first women employed as government codebreaker.
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Fay Bainter (1893-1968)
> Known as: Oscar-winning actor and Broadway performer; interred with her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Reginald Venable, U.S. Navy
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Grace Hopper (1906-1992)
> Known as: Mathematician, rear admiral, and pioneer in computer science
Hazel W. Johnson-Brown (1927-2011)
> Known as: First female African-American general in the U.S. Army
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Priscilla Lane (1915-1995)
> Known as: Noted actress in 1930s and ’40s; interred with her husband, Lt. Joseph A. Howard, Army Air Corps
Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853-1925)
> Known as: U.S. Civil Service Commissioner, said to have persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to support women’s voting rights
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Helen Herron “Nellie” Taft (1861-1943)
> Known as: First lady of President William Howard Taft; arranged for Japanese cherry trees to be planted in Washington, D.C.
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Helen Warren Langley (1924-1980)
> Known as: Editor of the National Basic Intelligence Factbook for the CIA; interred with her husband, Lt. Col. Robert E. Langley, U.S. Army
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994)
> Known as: First lady of President John F. Kennedy; American icon
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Jane Delano (1862-1919)
> Known as: Nurse and founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service.
Jeanne M. Holm (1921-2010)
> Known as: First female one-star general in the U.S. Air Force and first two-star general in any service branch
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Joy Bright Hancock (1898-1986)
> Known as: One of the first women to be sworn into the regular Navy
Juanita Hipps (1912-1979)
> Known as: Lt. Col. Juanita Hipps served as a U.S. Army nurse in the Philippines during WWII; wrote the bestselling book “I Served on Bataan”
Judith A. Resnik (1949-1986)
> Known as: Engineer and astronaut killed in the Challenger tragedy
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Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins (1818-1890)
> Known as: Coordinator of medical care for the Confederacy during the Civil War
Kara Spears Hultgreen (1965-1994)
> Known as: First female carrier-based fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy
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Katherine Tupper Brown Marshall (1882-1978)
> Known as: Husband of General George C. Marshall, U.S. Army; author of “Together: Annals of an Army Wife” (1946)
Marcelite Jordan Harris (1943-2018)
> Known as: First female African-American general officer in the U.S. Air Force, retiring in 1997 as major general and the highest ranking female Air Force officer
Marguerite Higgins (1920-1966)
> Known as: Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent; interred with her husband, Lt. Gen. William Evens Hall, U.S. Air Force.
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Marie Teresa Ríos (1917-1999)
> Known as: Driver of U.S. Army trucks and Civil Air Patrol pilot during WWII; author of “The Fifteenth Pelican,” basis for TV sitcom “The Flying Nun”
Marie Therese Rossi (1959-1991)
> Known as: First American female combat commander to fly into battle during the Persian Gulf War; killed in a helicopter crash in 1991
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Mary Crawford Ragland (1922-2010)
> Known as: Member of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-black, all-female Women’s Army Corps unit to serve overseas during World War II; one of seven 6888th members interred at Arlington
Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis (1788-1853)
> Known as: Wife of George Washington Parke Custis, who built the estate that became Arlington National Cemetery
Mary Randolph (1762-1828)
> Known as: Distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson; author of the pioneering American cookbook “The Virginia House-Wife;” probably first person buried on the estate that became Arlington National Cemetery
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Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)
> Known as: War correspondent reporting from the Belgian front in World War, and later a famed mystery writer; interred with her husband, Maj. Stanley Marshall Rinehart, U.S. Army
Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015)
> Known as: Actress from the 1930s through 1990s; interred with her husband, Brigadier General Charles F. Blair Jr., U.S. Air Force
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Namahyoke Curtis (1861-1935)
> Known as: African-American nurse in late 19th-century Washington; recruited Black nurses for the Spanish-American War effort
Ollie Josephine B. Bennett (1873-1957)
> Known as: First female medical officer commissioned in the U.S. Army
Ruby Bradley (1907-2002)
> Known as: Nurse in United States Army Nurse Corps; cared for fellow captives as a Japanese prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020)
> Known as: Supreme Court justice and liberal icon, known affectionately as RBG
Ruth A. Lucas (1920-2013)
> Known as: First female African-American colonel in the U.S. Air Force; highest ranking African-American woman in the Air Force at the time of her retirement
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Seraph Young Ford (1846-1938)
> Known as: First American woman to vote under a women’s equal suffrage law; interred with her husband, a Union Army veteran from the Civil War
Vinnie Ream (1847-1914)
> Known as: First woman and youngest person (at 18) to receive a commission from the U.S. government (to design a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda)
Winifred Collins (1911-1999)
> Known as: Chief of Naval Personnel for Women in the U.S. Navy and director of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.
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Zitkála-Ša (1876-1938)
> Known as: Yankton Dakota activist and clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; married to Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin, U.S. Army.
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