Markers of History

Memorial and Statue
The Georgia Volunteer

Location: In park at Park Ave & Bull St, Savannah, GA 31401

Visited: August 13, 2009, 8:20am

Transcriptions of markers:

East face:

In grate­ful remem­brance of
Stephen N. Harris
who served his coun­try well
as a sol­dier and cit­i­zen
Private, Co. B 2nd Ga. Infantry
1898
Cdr. Worth Bagley Camp No. 10 Dept. Ga. U.S.W.V.
1932
Commander Dept. of Ga. U.S.W.V
1900       1931
Adj. Gen. United Spanish War Veterans
1928       1929
Chief of Staff, Council Of Adm. Ga. U.S.W.V.
1937       1938
His char­ac­ter and lead­er­ship inspired his
com­rades and fel­low citizens.

North face: [Spanish War Veterans’ insignia]

West face:

A trib­ute to that
Soldier · Comrade · Citizen
William L. Grayson
1870       1941
1st. Lieut. Co. “M” 1st Regt. Ga. Vols.
Spanish American War
Commander Department of Georgia U.S.W.V.
1925 — 1927
National Commander in Chief U.S.W.V.
1928 — 1929
His dis­tin­guished ser­vice has endeared him
to all vet­er­ans of all wars
1946

South face (front):

To those
Georgians who
vol­un­teered and
served their
coun­try in the
Spanish American
War

My impres­sions: This marker was high on my “want to visit” list for our trip to Savannah, because I found out about this through find­ing a Spanish-American War memo­r­ial in Portsmouth, VA and the link­age made by an edi­tor of The Historical Marker Database to other mark­ers that fea­ture The Hiker, by sculp­tor Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson.

It is kind of amaz­ing to see some­thing famil­iar and appar­ently unique (until one learns the fuller story) in two dif­fer­ent set­tings, nearly 500 miles apart. And that isn’t dimin­ished too much by the fact that I knew I would see it and had planned the visit in Savannah.

I remem­ber, early on in my days at Markeroni see­ing some­body refer to “their marker,” a marker near their home with which they felt a strong affin­ity. At the time, before I’d started being inten­tional about snarf­ing (and before I’d logged any mark­ers on the site), I didn’t really under­stand it. It clicked in for my last month, as I was in Portsmouth, VA for about the third time to find mark­ers. That day I was “on a mis­sion” to com­plete vis­it­ing a series of mark­ers (for the city’s Path of History), but my walk­ing route took me past sev­eral mark­ers that I’d pre­vi­ously snarfed…and there was a famil­iar­ity that made it almost as though I was pass­ing an old friend, because I had vis­ited these mark­ers, taken their pho­tos, tran­scribed them, and writ­ten about them. So, stand­ing in a park in Savannah, the first time I’d ever done more than drive through the state of Georgia, I felt at home…even though, I still know woe­fully lit­tle about the Spanish-American War.

Markeroni sta­tus: Not yet logged (and it appears I also did not log the sim­i­lar mon­u­ment in Portsmouth, VA yet).

Credit: Thanks to hmdb.org and their page on this mon­u­ment for their tran­scrip­tions of this marker.

It’s amaz­ing how great the Internet is for find­ing infor­ma­tion that you didn’t even know you were miss­ing. I’ve men­tioned Markeroni reg­u­larly on these pages, but I haven’t yet men­tioned The Historical Marker Database or HMDB (except for adding a link to the sidebar).

Schenectady, NY. Photo: Howard C. Ohlhous, 2007. Courtesy of hmdb.org

Yesterday, though, I learned through the exper­tise of one of their edi­tors about links between a war memo­r­ial I had vis­ited in Portsmouth, VA and oth­ers across the coun­try. Almost two months ago, I saw a memo­r­ial com­mem­o­rat­ing those who served in the Spanish-American War. But through an editor’s links, I found that the depic­tion on that 1942 mon­u­ment, ded­i­cated to those who vol­un­teered from Portsmouth and from Norfolk County, was actu­ally some­what famous.

Their data­base includes exam­ples from three other places:

• Schenectady, NY, ded­i­cated in 1921 (and reded­i­cated in 1996) to honor those who served from Schenectady County;


Savannah, GA. Photo: Mike Stroud, 2008. Courtesy of hmdb.org

• Savannah, GA (a city my wife and I will be vis­it­ing next month), erected in 1931 to honor those who vol­un­teered from Georgia; and


Arlington, VA. Photo: Richard E. Miller, 2008. Courtesy of hmdb.org

• Arlington, VA, where it has stood in Arlington National Cemetery (where my wife and I attended a bur­ial ear­lier this year) since 1965.

According to Wikipedia, there are many more copies around the coun­try, with esti­mates of 39 in an arti­cle on another exam­ple to roughly fifty, accord­ing to the arti­cle on the sculp­tor, Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871 – 1932). Born in Brookline, MA, she was denied entry to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, because she was female. She started study­ing with sculp­tor Henry Hudson Kitson in 1886 and went on to marry him. Kitson was the first woman to be admit­ted to the National Sculpture Society.

So next month, when we go to Savannah, I think I’ll have to see if I can get to this marker. And I’ll def­i­nitely be keep­ing my eyes open online to see what else I can learn about his­tory (and his­tor­i­cal mark­ers) from others!

It’s amaz­ing what you can learn from the Internet these days!

On Monday, this blog will con­tinue our trip towards Yorktown and later in the week, we’ll travel from there to Jamestown on the Colonial Parkway. I hope you’ll join us.

Markers of History is going to take a hol­i­day week­end off from post­ing, but I didn’t want to leave you high and dry, so we’ll close today with a bumper load of his­tor­i­cal markers.

Path of History
Fort Nelson Park

Location: Fort Nelson Park, cor­ner of Crawford Pkwy & Effingham St, Portsmouth, VA 23704.

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:55pm

On my last trip to Portsmouth, I came across Fort Nelson Park which con­tained roughly a dozen Path of History mark­ers about Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I’m cross­ing my fin­gers, hop­ing that I man­aged to get all of them. (I’ll have to double-check next time I’m in Portsmouth.)

Given the large num­ber of images and mark­ers included in this post, I will spare the front page of this site and ask you to click the link to see the mark­ers and their texts, but I’ll break with my tra­di­tional order and open this post with:

My impres­sions: I was impressed with the pleas­ant set­ting for these mark­ers. That said, I was dis­ap­pointed (on a hot June day) not to find more shade. Thinking back, I’m won­der­ing what may have stood on that site before the park, which only opened three years ago.

Related to this: See Monday’s post for a state his­tor­i­cal marker about Fort Nelson.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.