2-982-147 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Decoration Day at Philadelphia: Orphans decorating their Fathers' Graves in Glenwood Cemetery, 1876. 'Tuesday, May 30, was kept sacred throughout the United States for the purpose of decorating the graves of all the soldiers of the Federal army killed in the great civil war, who are interred in the public cemeteries of the towns and places to which their regiments belonged...Prayers were offered...hymns were sung...flowers, woven into festoons, or crowns, or other garlands, were solemnly laid upon the graves; and set orations were delivered, expressing sentiments of patriotic duty and commending the virtuous dead...the families of the deceased veterans, their widows and children, brothers and sisters, or friends, remained to place on the tomb of some person most dear to them an offering of private affection. Flags of uniform size and pattern were supplied to them for this purpose'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.