Where Did Memorial Day Originate?

The first national Memorial Day took place on May 30, 1868. But many communities had already been honoring their war dead in the years immediately before Major General John A. Logan designated that day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”

Although some people consider Logan the founder of Memorial Day, approximately 25 cities and towns—including two named Columbus: one in Mississippi, one in Georgia—claim to have originated the holiday that was first called Decoration Day. Indeed, the Union Army veteran was inspired by local commemorations of Civil War dead already being held in pockets throughout the North and the South, in some cases before the war had even concluded.

Logan, himself, had delivered the keynote address at an April 29, 1866, Decoration Day commemoration in Carbondale, Illinois, in which Union Army veterans paraded in tattered uniforms and spread flowers on cemetery graves. His wife, Mary Logan, wrote in her 1913 memoir that she had suggested the holiday after becoming so moved by “the little flags and the withered flowers that had been laid” on Confederate graves in Petersburg, Virginia, in a March 1868 ceremony.

The earliest claim to Memorial Day is an 1864 observance in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. A teenager mourning her Union Army father and a mother honoring her son who fell at Gettysburg laid flowers on their graves and began an annual town tradition.

The first large Memorial Day was likely held in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. According to newspaper reports, a crowd of 10,000 recently freed Black people and other locals gathered at a racetrack to honor 250 Union Army soldiers who had died there while being held as prisoners of war. The commemoration included a parade, flowers, music and readings from the Bible.

With so many towns clamoring for the title, the federal government weighed in on the debate when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a May 26, 1966, proclamation that “officially recognized that the patriotic tradition of observing Memorial Day began one hundred years ago in Waterloo, New York.” Since then, Waterloo has been the official birthplace of Memorial Day.

The small Finger Lakes village first staged an annual community-wide commemoration of its war dead on May 5, 1866. That day, businesses shuttered, and residents draped buildings in black crepe and adorned soldiers’ graves with flowers and flags.

Waterloo is now home to the National Memorial Day Museum, but the other contenders haven’t been dissuaded for staking their claims. The argument over who gave birth to Memorial Day remains a holiday tradition.