Part of our long weekend involved one of my favorite hobbies, visiting lonely old cemeteries and taking a look at the stones. This being Memorial Day weekend we were especially lucky to find the grave of a man who participated in the reason for the observance, the Civil War. B. R. Cawthorn was a part of Company B of the 78th Indiana Infantry, a unit mustered in August of 1862 Indianapolis from residents of western Indiana (Putnam, Parke, Hendricks, Wayne, and Clay Counties). They deployed to protect the port of Evansville to combat guerrillas from Kentucky. In spite of its strategic significance, the south never really made an attempt to occupy Evansville. Incursions into Indiana would come to Franklin and Uniontown, but never Evansville.

Still, Mr. Cawthorn served his country with pride and dignity and now he rests in the quiet churchyard of Union Chapel Baptist Church with lichen growing on his simple headstone and an American flag gently fluttering by its side. Thanks for your service, Mr. Cawthorn.

Happy Memorial Day

It all started with the Civil War. More young men died on the battlefields of the Civil War than anyone could have imagined, so many that it inaugurated the creation of the United States' first national cemeteries. After the war, towns and cities across the country began venerating the dead with springtime ceremonies, prayers, and floral decorations of the graves of soldiers. Like most holidays and observances, the birth of what was then called Decoration Day was an organic affair and nobody can be sure where the movement began, but in 1966 the US Government weighed in, declaring Waterloo, NY the birthplace of Memorial Day. The claim is that Waterloo had a tradition of closing businesses and decorating the graves of the fallen with flowers and flags, but I catch a whiff of coastal hubris. Heaven forbid it should be some little town in the hinterlands...how lucky we are to have the stake driven in a nice, respectable, East Coast town. Anyway, I digress...

In 1868 General John A. Logan of Murphysboro, IL leader of a Union soldier's organization called for a national day of remembrance. He selected May 30th because it didn't coincide with the anniversary date of any specific battle, proclaiming "The 30th of May, 1868, is designated 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, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land." The holiday would retain its name through World War I and II, though it slowly was morphing from a remembrance of those who fell during the Civil War and becoming a remembrance of American deaths in global conflicts. It would take decades and an act of congress before the name was officially changed.

In 1968 the federal government enacted a bill called the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which, as the name implies, moved some holidays to Mondays in order to create three-day weekends. The date change not only moving Decoration Day to the last Monday in May as well as changing the name to the now familiar Memorial Day.

The change wasn't universally popular, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) campaigned to return to the date of May 30 in spite of the arbitrary nature of that date. In a 2002 Memorial Day address VFW stated, "Changing the date merely to create a three-day weekend has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day." Still, we celebrate the day with flowers and visits to the cemetery to adore graves with flags or wreaths or, more likely, barbeque with the family. In the end that's what they fought for, isn't it? The freedom and safety to enjoy a warm spring day with the ones you love without fear?

Rubber Limbs and the USS Oneida

Running a blog that thrives on old periodicals means constantly pouring through moldering magazines and newspapers in search of the odd and intriguing. In the six or so years I've been publishing my missives on the past I've seen hundreds of ads for cars, trains, ships, planes, canned goods, candy, and vacations around the world, but this week I stumbled across a first: an ad touting artificial limbs. 

A. A. Marks wasn't the first company to manufacture artificial limbs. The earliest example comes from Capua, Italy where a bronze, iron, and wood leg dating back to 300 BC was unearthed during an 1858 excavation. Through history the art of replacing lost limbs ebbed and advanced, often in step with the history of human conflict. In the early 14th century a German mercenary invented the first hand with movable joints. Through the 17th and 19th centuries advances in articulation continued and with the scourge of amputations that attended the American Civil War, companies like A. A. Marks continued to push the prosthetic envelope.

The ad comes from the April 1893 edition of Railway Carmen's Journal and features a stalwart looking gentleman in US Navy uniform wearing a cap that bears the name of the U.S.S Oneida. The Oneida met its fate twenty-three years prior to the running of Marks' ad and she saw action in the Civil War, either of which would explain the gentleman's advanced age. It's hard to be certain, but a further look through the magazine revealed I'd apparently just been ignorant of just how many ads for prosthetic limbs were running at the time. It's hard to know if the reason owes to the dangerous nature of the railroad industry at the turn of the last century or if it's a testament to the number of men who would have been in the market to upgrade the prosthesis they'd been living with since the war.