Hopkinton Honors War Dead

LOGAN, MARTIN

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/6/2015 at 07:50:06

Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, May 29, 1949

HOPKINTON HONORS WAR DEAD

Hopkinton First To Remember Fallen Heroes

Des Moines(AP)
The first Memorial Day was proclaimed by Gen. John A. Logan in May, 1868. But years before that the people of Hopkinton, a hamlet in Delaware county, had given public recognition to their boys in blue. The records of the Grand Army of the Republic headquarters show that in November 1865, they unveiled a memorial monument at Hopkinton. It was designed in part as a tribute to the young men who had enlisted from Lenox College, a school which has since passed out of existence.

Out of the decimated ranks of Civil War veterans for whom the first decoration day was proclaimed, only one remains within Iowa's borders. He is James P. Martin, who was 101 years old last Nov. 10 When the call for defense of the union was issued, 76, 242 Iowans marched away in the Grand Army of the Republic. The records of the state headquarters show that 13,001 of them died in action or were otherwise listed as casualties.