Post and Courier49%
Intruder sets fires in Beaufort National Cemetery 9%
By Tony Kukulich17%
7/25/2026, 5:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Anecdotal, and Representativeness Heuristic, with Unattributed Quote as the most egregious example at 15.7% saturation with 52 hits. Analysis detected 269 faulty-reasoning hits from 331 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 25% and a BS Rank of 9% (20,124 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.90% of the article peer group.
BEAUFORT — Police are investigating a report of vandalism at Beaufort National Cemetery in which someone set small fires on the property.
The incident was reported July 22 and is believed to have occurred sometime early that day or late the day before.
“An unknown person or person set a couple of small fires in the mulch bed behind a new columbarium that’s being built in the northern part of the cemetery,” said Michael Brophy, assistant director of Beaufort National Cemetery, which is one of 157 national cemeteries in the nation managed by the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs.
No gravesites or headstones were damaged, Brophy said.
The fires were set near the northern edge of the cemetery in an area that is normally out of public view.
Brophy, whose assignment to Beaufort National is his fifth in the national cemetery system, said that incidents of vandalism at the facility located on Boundary Street are fairly uncommon.
“We have a remarkably low amount of incidents compared to other locations where I’ve worked previously,” he said.
“Generally, the local community is extremely respectful and protective of the cemetery.”
Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, the cemetery was established in 1863 as a burial site for Union soldiers who died at a nearby military hospital.
In 1987, 19 graves were discovered on Folly Island that researchers determined were the remains of Black Union soldiers from both the 55th Massachusetts Regiment and the 1st North Carolina Colored Infantry Regiment.
They likely died of disease during the winter of 1863-64.
Their remains were reinterred at Beaufort National Cemetery in May 1989.
Today, there are about 30,000 people buried at Beaufort National Cemetery.
A two-year project to expand its capacity is nearly complete.
The new columbarium, which is a structure that stores cremated remains, is part of that expansion.
The expansion will add 1,400 spaces for casket burials and another 1,400 spots for buried cremains.
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