Markers of History

OK, if I didn’t want to say much of any­thing about the American Revolution or the Civil War, I’m likely to be even less forth­com­ing about the Spanish-American War. Truth be told, about the only thing I knew about it was its name. It wasn’t until a few min­utes ago that I real­ized that it was about Cuba.  But any­way, on to the monument:

Spanish-American War statue

Location: Crawford Pkwy at North St, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 2:10pm

Transcription of marker:

Spanish-American War
1898 – 1902

Erected by the cit­i­zens of Portsmouth and Norfolk County. Sponsored by the Austin R. Davis Camp No 4 — United Spanish War Veterans and Auxiliary to com­mem­o­rate the valor and patri­o­tism of those who vol­un­tar­ily served in the war with Spain, the Phillipine insur­rec­tion and the China relief expedition.

Dedicated May 23, 1942

My impres­sions: The statue looks inter­est­ing, but it is intrigu­ing how the text was placed. The marker I tran­scribed above is to the back of the man it por­trays. The front of the pedestal has a crest of the Spanish American War Veterans. I find it inter­est­ing how many mark­ers and mon­u­ments in Portsmouth are in the mid­dles of streets: there were the first two state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers I saw there, as well as the Confederate Monument, and now this one. Though this one doesn’t have the fence of the Confederate Monument, its set­ting is nicer, with more grass, and I could actu­ally get to it with­out wor­ry­ing that I was going to be struck by a car.

I won­der whether the logo/crest was instantly rec­og­niz­able in the era when this statue was placed. And the tim­ing is curi­ous: 1942, four decades after the war ended (using the date there). Was it sim­ply a mat­ter of funds? Did World War II have any­thing to do with it? I don’t know the answers, but they are cer­tainly inter­est­ing ques­tions. Maybe some­day I’ll do some read­ing and see what I can find to answer them.

Notes for snar­fers: This is very close to the North Street ferry landing.

Markeroni sta­tus: This site has not yet been sub­mit­ted for inclu­sion in the Markeroni database.

After this, I took the ferry, and there was one more snarf in Norfolk before I returned home, and you’ll read about that in my next post.