Memorial Day Trivia

* Following the end of the Civil War, many communities set aside a day to mark the end of the war or honor those who had died. These observances eventually coalesced around Decoration Day, honoring the Union dead, and the several Confederate Memorial Days.

* It is believed the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

* The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York which observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter. General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan led the call for the day to be observed each year and helped spread the event nationwide.

* General Logan had been impressed by the way the South honored their dead with a special day and decided the Union needed a similar day. Reportedly, Logan said that it was most fitting; that the ancients, especially the Greeks, had honored their dead, particularly their heroes, by chaplets of laurel and flowers, and that he intended to issue an order designating a day for decorating the grave of every soldier in the land, and if he could he would have made it a holiday.

* Many of the states of the U.S. South refused to celebrate Decoration Day, due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army and also because there were very few veterans of the Union Army who lived in the South. A notable exception was Columbus, Mississippi, which on April 25, 1866 at its Decoration Day commemorated both the Union and Confederate casualties buried in its cemetery.

* The alternative name of "Memorial Day" was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967.

* The tradition of placing American flags on each of the 260,000+ gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery on the Thursday before Memorial Day was started in the 1950’s by the 1200 soldiers of the 3rd US Infantry began.