Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-05-29

equivalent often connected with some
act of loving service. To the children
of our land, and to many others as
WELL our May Memorial Day is the
we'll beloved Decoration Day. This is
as it should be, for this day had its
christening in flowers and spring
blossoms.
Fortytwo years ago, on the fifth day
Of May, the first spring after the close
of the Civil War, Sarah K. Smiley was
at the head of an Industrial school in
an abandoned Confederate Hospital in
Richmond Virginia. Nearby was 4
second school, in which corps Of
young teachers from the North were
giving first lessons in the three RS to
the freedmen. The city was under
martial law, and consequently many
Union soldiers were within its Dor
ders. These were the living repre-
sentatives of the Union, but the dead
in the shallow graves nearby far out
numbered the living.
The graves Of those who died in Lib
by Prison, Belle Isle and Castle Thun
der reached into the thousands. An
inspiration to decorate these graves
entered the heart of Sarah K. Smiley,
on that May day long ago. Her
thought was ably seconded by the
young teachers near her, one of whom
had brother lying in one Of those I'M
named graves. To the Union soldiers
these men were all brothers-their
comrades who had fought with them
and died in the end for their country.
They, too, joined heartily in the UNDER
taking, and gathering great masses Of
sweet spring blossoms, the little band
marched to the burial place of their be-
loved dead and laid their offerings
tenderly on the brown sand that but
little more than covered those laid
beneath. The barren waste hiding it's
sorrowful yet glorious story the do
voted group of women, the loyal
soldiers doing their work Of love in
the spring sunshine, is a picture one
would gladly hold long in the memory.
The act was reported to the Secre-
tary of War at Washington, as the
first systematic decoration of Union
soldiers graves Six months later the
Government sent down and inspected
these burial places, and from the prison
books got an idea of the number who
had persisted there They bought q
tract of land outside the city limits and
made it into beautiful burial ground
Then the bodies so hastily buried were
dug up and counted and placed in this
Federal Cemetery, with marble
marker at the head of each grave.
These little headstones are all
numbered. beginning with 1, and the
IL. how i
government officer lives in lodge and
looks after the place which is kept like
u beautiful garden; indeed, the Fedora!
Cemetery OF Richmond is one of the
most beautiful cemeteries in the coun-
try.
This was the birth of Memorial Day.
and the American people, with loving
hands and hearts, have gone on making
It a decorating, flower-crowning day.
They We're young men in their prime
who placed flowers on the Richmond
graves. Today they are veterans OF
the Civil War. who march our streets
carrying garlands to decorate the
graves of their comrades. But they
are not alone The sons of the vet
Grams, proud of their inheritance. ac-
school boys who look proudly two gen.
erations back to the brave loyalty of
their forefathers. Descendants of
Revolutionary soldiers, and of the Civil
War. and the later soldiers of the
Spanish American War, together with
the strangers between the seas that
border our land all join today in hon.
orng our countrys loyal dead. A
touch of loving loyalty makes all the
world akin
Every cemetery in our land has it's
decorated graves on Memorial Day,
even old ST., Marks, in New York.
where bodies of our earliest colonists
have rested for centuries. has within
its vaults some later descendants whose
ashes are mixed with those of the past.
and whose near kin remember them
both on Decoration Day. Imbedded in
the side of the old church. Peter
Stuyvesant's memorial stone bears
record to his life and deeds, and on
Decoration Day row of Towering
plants tells the story that there are
still those who remember what the city
owes to one of it's first governors.
An exquisite wreath of roses sur
mounted by small waving flag. COW
cred the brown graves in the church
yard last Decoration Day The decOra-
ton is a yearly remembrance and a
yearly attraction to the East Side
crowds who all day long pass the
churchyard fence. Round childish
faces are squeezed between the iron
bars; mothers stop with their babies
in their arms, young men and rollick-
ing boys each in turn gaze and admire,
then pass on. not knowing perhaps.
the personality of the man lying there,
or Longfellow's
Lives of great men all remind us.
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time"
but still catching the beauty of the
flowers and the National emblem, and