Reports on the First Decoration Day in Hudson

As Gossips noted on Saturday, the first nationwide observance of Decoration Day--what we now know as Memorial Day--took place on May 30, 1868, to commemorate the hundreds of thousands who died in the Civil War. Along with the rest of the country--North and South--Hudson observed the first Decoration Day by laying flowers, fashioned into wreaths, crosses, and bouquets, on the graves of its Civil War dead. The following is the account of the solemn observance which appeared in the Evening Register.

 

 

 

 

There is no photographic record of the first Decoration Day in Hudson, but this illustration from Harper's Weekly, which shows the decoration of the three thousand graves of Civil War dead at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn on May 30, 1868, gives a sense of what probably happened here in our cemetery as well.

The Hudson Daily Star, in addition to reporting about the procession, the strewing of flowers, the speeches, and the prayers, offered this commentary on the day.

 

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