May 21, 2024
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry looks back over the years at Memorial Day services involving Union veterans of the Civil War. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
For Memorial Day this year I look back at Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) veterans who honored their departed comrades in arms.
The Grand Army of the Republic was formed in 1866 by Union Army, Navy and Marine veterans who served during the Civil War. The GAR lasted until 1956 when its last member, 109-year-old Albert Woolson, died.
In 1936 members from various GAR posts in Massachusetts showed up to participate in the Memorial Day exercises that drew thousands of spectators. The Boston Herald featured some of the veteran attendees in a photo collage it published.
In these photos we see (top row, left to right, first photo): sitting next to gold star mother Mrs. Mary Moorse is Charles H. Richard of GAR Post No. 68 for a Memorial Day service at the Cedar Grove Cemetery in Dorchester, a neighborhood in Boston; (top row, left to right, third photo): William H. Jackson; Rev. E. George Biddle, commander of the GAR Robert A. Bell Post; standing in front is Robert Biddle Butler, grandson of Rev. Biddle; (bottom row, left to right, first photo): GAR members Leonard Boyd and Ottis W. Gray of the Charles Ward Post No. 62 of Newton; (bottom row, left to right, third photo): Prince A. Phinney of Brookline; Thomas A. Corson of Salem; and Theodore E. Clark, members of the GAR Boston Post.
A scrapbook made by the Swain family of Wilmington, Massachusetts, features three pages of Civil War veteran John Henry Simpson (1849-1943), who served as a private in the Union Army Company D, 1st Battalion Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. He enlisted at age 13.
John was born to William F. and Phebe Frye (Kenney) Simpson. He married Ann Louisa Swain, daughter of Sgt. Levi Jr. and Louisa (Pearson) Swain.
This first photo of John Simpson, GAR senior vice commander, is from Memorial Day services at the Soldier’s Monument in Wildwood Cemetery in 1943. He was the only surviving veteran from the Civil War who was a member of GAR Post No. 194 of Reading, Massachusetts.
It would be the last Memorial Day exercise Mr. Simpson would attend. He died on 5 November 1943, and was laid to rest alongside his comrades in this cemetery.
Mr. Simpson did not have children, but there were plenty of nieces and nephews to love and cherish him. Another photograph in the scrapbook is from Mr. Simpson’s 90th year of life celebration, taken in 1939.
A precious moment captured with his great grandniece Marion Sidelinker, daughter of Cecil Walker and Signie Elvira (Dahlstrom) Sidelinker, granddaughter of George Arthur and Antenette Mable (Pike) Sidelinker, and great granddaughter of George Washington and Mary Ann Church (Simpson) Sidelinker, sister of Mr. Simpson.
On Memorial Day in 1940 GAR members gathered in Los Angles, California, at the Rosedale Cemetery along with five generations of families whose ancestors fought in three different wars for their country.
This photo caption reads:
Honoring their departed comrades of Civil War days, veterans of Stanton Post No. 55 of the Grand Army of the Republic are shown today as they laid wreaths on graves at the Memorial Day exercises in Rosedale Cemetery. Left to right: Commander Robert C. Blair; George W. Seitz; Capt. C. E. Merrick; Luther Bristol; Nelson Payne; F. H. Crafts; and Stanley Mason, son of a Civil War veteran.
This article that accompanies the above photo reads:
Five generations of the living, among them veterans of three wars, gathered today on a sunny mound and promised the honorable dead that the American dream will live.
It was a living pageant of history, there in quiet Rosedale Cemetery on Washington Boulevard – a few bent and faltering men who were boys at Antietam, living out the last few years of a round century of life; a graying group that followed “T. R.” up San Juan Hill or pulled Dewey’s lanyards at Manila; a few boys who may yet know the crash of blitzkrieg; children too young to know quite what war means; and the widows, mothers, daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of the dead.
In one corner were gathered the little group of GAR veterans, a scant dozen, with their sons and daughters, clustered around the old cannon that roared in the Wilderness, dropping flowers on the graves of comrades dead these many years.
In another and larger group were the Spanish War veterans, with their wives, children and grandchildren.
On the white stones stretching in ever-longer rows were written histories, too. Just to read the names was to reread the history of a continent:
The Wills, the Rolphs and Wilsons, the Bennetts and the Wheelers that lay in the GAR plot, those who belonged to the early Nineteenth Century America peopled with the descendants of English colonists…
Speaking of early settlers, here is a wonderful photo taken in 1909 at the GAR Thomas Gardner Post No. 207 headquarters in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Most of these veterans descend from Nantucket founders.
In this photo we see (front row, left to right): Benjamin B. Burdick; Charles M. Crocker; Charles Hyde; John R. Raymond; George A. Backus; Peter Hoy; Frederick H. Barney; Sampson D. Pompey; and Franklin B. Murphy; (middle row, left to right): Edwin H. Wing; Josiah F. Murphy; James H. Wood; James H. Barrett; Alfred F. Ray; Josiah A. Young; Benjamin A. Coffin; Edward C. Bennett; Hiram W. Reed; and Henry F. Fisher; (rear row, left to right): G. Howard Winslow; William A. Barrett; George Dolby; and Horace Spencer; (at extreme left): George Fisher; (at extreme right): Valentine Small.
Stay tuned for more…
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Note on the header image: “The March of Time,” by Henry Sandham, 1896. This painting shows a parade of veterans of the U.S. Civil War during Decoration Day. General William Tecumseh Sherman is in the front row at the far right. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
