We received this note from local Civil War historian Nick Smith about the background of Monday's Civil War Memorial Day ceremony at Mountain View Cemetery.
From the 1890s until the 1940s, there was usually a Memorial Day ceremony held at Mountain View cemetery, to honor veterans in general, but especially the Civil War veterans who were buried there. The last of those veterans died in 1946, and after that the tradition seems to have fallen away. It was an early part of Altadena history, though, bringing veterans and their families to the cemetery every Memorial Day. In the old days, the first part of the ceremony was held in what is now Old Town Pasadena, then folks would ride the trolley up Fair Oaks to the cemetery for the afternoon services.
A few years ago, I was advising an Eagle Scout candidate who had researched these ceremonies and wanted to revive them. That didn’t work out, but I ended up hosting a ceremony, with the help of the cemetery and of different cultural heritage groups, including the Sons of Union Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, both of which are made up of descendants of Civil War soldiers and sailors.
This year, the United Daughters of the Confederacy managed to locate the unmarked grave of a Confederate veteran, and get a marker placed, so Confederate re-enactors will be there to fire a rifle volley in his honor, but the ceremony overall is to honor the over 600 Civil War veterans buried at Mountain View.
The reasons for the large number of them, in a small cemetery in California, are complex enough that I’ve been studying it for over five years. The short version is that for a number of reasons, Pasadena became a destination for Civil War veterans for business in the early days, but also for reasons of health and fellowship with other veterans.
There remain several soldier graves with no visible markers, and work continues in identifying the precise locations, to get them marked eventually.
The ceremony on Monday will include traditional graveside services from both the Sons of Union Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, along with presentations of the stories of some of the many Civil War veterans buried at the cemetery.
The ceremony will begin at 2 pm, but groups and individuals will be decorating graves with flags and flowers, beginning at about 12 noon. The event is free and open to the public. Those wishing to bring flowers to decorate the graves are very welcome.
