Memorial Day roots in upstate New York and Illinois

When I attended the 2012 West Frankfort Chamber of Commerce dinner recently, a speaker mentioned John Logan College's namesake, a Civil War general and Illinois Congressman and Senator, was "founder of Memorial Day". This contradicts legend in the Finger Lakes' region of upstate New York, where village signs welcome travelers to Waterloo to "the birthplace of Memorial Day".

So I researched the subject online and found several variations of the same story: Waterloo held a Memorial Day celebration on May 5, 1866 with flags draped at half mast, and General Logan issued an executive order declaring "Decoration Day" exactly two years to the day later; the celebration that year was May 30.

Waterloo - located in a market I used to work as a director of advertising & market development (Auburn, N.Y.'s The Citizen) - is home to a Memorial Day Museum. It was officially recognized as the birthplace of the federal holiday in 1966.

A post on a Memorial Day Web site addresses the who-was-first controversy: "While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen. Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868."