At last week’s city assembly, citizens approved an $11,775 grant from the Harvard Community Preservation Committee’s budget to repair the city’s Civil War tablets.
The request came from the city’s deputy administrator, Marie Sobalvarro, who told reporters that every time she entered the mayor’s assembly hall she remembered the poor condition of the tablets. He started the process to request cash to repair them. in the fall of 2019.
These marble lists of Harvard infantrymen and two volunteer nurses who served in the Civil War have had little or no maintenance in their more than 130 years, and in recent decades have been ignored by the general public. With the final renovation of the town hall, the shelves were taken there in 2017. They once hung back in a prominent outdoor position in the meeting room and now receive the attention they deserve as a vital ancient artifact from Harvard. It is also fitting that the recovery plan approved just before Memorial Day, since the civil war and the memory of those who died there were the origin of this holiday.
Three years after the end of the Civil War, General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic called for a “Decoration Day” on May 30. The day was widely celebrated in 1868, and by 1890 all northern states had followed. . as a public holiday. World Wars replaced the day of a memorial for those who died in the Civil War to a day of remembrance for all the servicemen who died in the American wars. last Monday in May.
Harvard citizens definitely agreed to the observance of a memorial day, although it would be more than two decades before there was physical evidence of their feelings. According to Henry Nourse in “History of Harvard to 1894,” in 1864, the people “voted to raise $300 to erect a monument to our brave people who entered service; their names shall be inscribed on it. “Since the monument was not erected until 24 years later, it is assumed that the cash was difficult to lift, as so much was spent the war to recruit and help soldiers. Finally, in 1888, the city’s efforts culminated in the unveiling of a monument that ultimately cost $1,208. First it was proposed to place the monument in the cemetery, but when the time came, the municipality legalized its existing location in the Commune. On Memorial Day that year, the monument was consecrated with what Nourse calls “appropriate ceremonial. “
Meanwhile, Harvard was making plans to honor not only those who died, but all those who had served in the Civil War. In the plan for a public library on the site of the Elm House Hotel, which burned down in 1880, commemorative plaques were included with the names of all the city’s infantrymen. The library was completed in 1886, and there is no record of its installation, it will have to be within a while after the tombstones were placed on the wall of the lobby. on either side of the library entrance. As Nourse describes, each marble plate has two columns of engraved and gilded names, and above the lists, written in capital letters, is the legend: “Harvard to his brave sons who fought for union in the war of rebellion. “On the left shelf are 68 names of infantrymen and on the right are the names of 64 infantrymen and two volunteer nurses.
Nourse acknowledges that there are errors in the lists, whether omissions or erroneous inclusions. He adds: “But similar failures are not unusual in such lists, even laboriously drawn up, when they are made of imperfect records of the people long after men and their individuals reports have been forgotten by the city’s population. “It is precisely this kind of naming omission that the city’s war memorial recovery committee went to great lengths to deal with its recent recovery of the World War II, Korean, Vietnam and Gulf War Memorial.
In the 1970s, the library ran out of space and in 1982 the municipal assembly voted to move the main front to a new side front to allow for more interior space. During this renovation, the stone boards were moved to the lower level, where they were still intact but particularly reduced in their presence. In fact, it was simple to them: out of sight, out of mind. Sobalvarro said even members of the war memorial committee had “forgotten a little bit about them. “
The result was further deterioration, a fact fully learned when they were hung on top of the town hall, flanking the entrance doors and in broad daylight. across 61/2 feet, they look like gigantic slabs of gray stone. Only through an intense search can you read the legend and the names, obviously engraved but without any gilding. A crack in the shelf on the left side crosses it horizontally. Sobalvarro said the restorer told him that the weight of the stone held the two pieces together safely.
Sobalvarro said the paintings will be carried out at the site and are expected to begin in August and be completed until the end of this year calfinishar. The wooden frames will surround the tablet, and the character of the leg and the names will be gilded so that they are legible again. And one day, Sobalvarro says, there would possibly be luminaries to take away the darkness.
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