Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1908-09-11
VETERANS IN PARADE
ON Toledo STREETS
Remnant of Civil War rios'
Marches with Flags flying
and Bands Playing.
FORT MEIGs SHAFT DEDICATED
Granite Monument, 80 Feet High
Commentaries Preservation OF
American Boundary.

Toledo correspondence:
With flags flying, bands playing
crowds cheering, and a bright sky over
bo.d veterans of the Grand Army Of
the Republic marched through the
str Gets of an ecampment city for the
forty-second time Wednesday after
noon At the official reviewing stand,
whore stood William II. Taft, Governor
Harris. Senator Foraker and Mayor
Brand Whitlock, the colors were dlppeu
and the department commanders joined
Co,nrpnnder-in CHIEF Burton in the
stand. The parade being the leading
| feature Of the encampment. many tuned
their arrival for the event, and the
crowd of visitors was augmented by
thousands during Tuesday night.
II is estimated that, including the
veterans and their wives, there were
10000 visitors in the city. Excursion
trains brought them by hundreds from
cite. of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois anc
Michigan, and they poured In from the
rural districts on the interurban lines.
It was well toward II o'clock when
the van Of the parade marched past
the reviewing stand, where they were
sal with a bolnbardment Of flowers,
for which surprise the women Of To
ledo had been preparing for several
DAYS. They emerged from the floral
shower to be greeted by an immense
human flag. made up OF nearly 5000
children, who, il their dresses OF red
white and blue, swayed their bodies SO
that the emblem seemed to sway as in
a breeze.
Harrison Preserved Boundary.
Two events Of the G. A. r. enca1np-
ment Tuesday were the dedication or
the Fort Me1gs monument and the
civic parade. In the latter 1900 mem
bers of local organizations marched
| with bands playing and banners flying,
| while the veterans, whose parade was
to take place Wednesday, looked On.
1t was at Fort Meigs that General
William Henry Harrison checked The
British advances under Proctor after
the general had proited by General
Hull's surrender at Detroit. With citi-
zen soldiery gathered from Ohio, Ken
lucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia, Cen
era1 Harrison succeeded in preserving
the American boundary as it now eX-
lists. In those days Toledo vas a mere
collection of huts, which served as
headquarters for French furriers and
traders travelling from Montreal and
Quebec to Cincinnati and New Orleans.
| Not many years ago tie graves Of the
heroes Of Fort Meiss lay unmarked. A
| church stands where there was former.
~ a British battery.
Tents Are
The forty-second encampment will,
veterans declare, go down in history
with e most laudatory chapter devoted
to a. committee which abandoned the
traditional tents and demiciled the old
soldiers under real roofs and on real
beds. The veterans in Toledo ran no
risk Of colds and rheumatism from
sleeping on the straw strewn ground or
from dew soaked anvas.
There was something in the tents of
former reunions which appealed to the
Imagination of the veterans and stirred
their memories Of war days, but many
Of them paid for it with pneumonia
and rheumatism, and they were I'M
stinted in their praise of the arrange
ment this year.