This week's paper was focused on the GAR, other wise known as the Grand Army of the Republic. For this paper I have utilized the GAR's home website, the Library of Congress, and a multitude of newspapers.
In the heat of the Civil War, men from across the country left their communities to preserve the Union and in doing so, forged new brotherhoods with their fellow soldiers under the anvil of war. By the end of the Civil War, these men who had fought together, lived together, and survived together had forged an unbreakable bond. Much like modern soldiers, upon returning to their communities, they felt a sense of loss and emptiness as they began to miss their brothers-in-arms. These men came together to reforge a sense of camaraderie and understanding of the horrors they all faced.
The most prominent of such groups is the Grand Army of the Republic. Formed on April 6, 1866, by Benjamin F. Stephenson, the GAR served as a way for Union veterans to rekindle the fraternity and camaraderie of their units. The GAR quickly spread across the country and in 1890 reached 400,00 members with over seven thousand posts (posts are at the community level of the organization, akin to a club). Its members worked tirelessly to preserve the memory of those who died preserving the Union and supporting veterans and widowed families in need. While the GAR has declined since its hey-day, there are still a grand number of posts active across the nation, including one in St. Cloud, Florida.
New York entrepreneur Raymond Moore, upon hearing of Florida’s land boom in the early twentieth century, sought to exploit such an offer and in 1907, Moore clipped an ad for large tracts of land in Osceola County and placed it with ads of similar claims. Soon after Moore was hired by the GAR Association to find a site for an “old soldiers’ colony” for Union veterans. Moore searched across Florida before returning to Kissimmee Valley; In 1909, the GAR bought the land that makes up present-day St. Cloud and in 1911, 104 voters approved a referendum that incorporated the town of St. Cloud. When St. Cloud was incorporated, a new GAR hall was needed for the growing post. Tampa architect M.W. Chessman was contracted and built the still-standing GAR building in 1914 in St. Cloud.
In the past few decades, the St. Cloud chapter(which has since become the Sons or Daughters of Union Veterans as the GAR disbanded when the last veterans died) has done much to ensure the memory of its deceased veterans lives on. In 1929 and throughout the twentieth century the GAR and its allied organizations held parades, campfires, memorial day celebrations, and picnics to celebrate its Union veterans. In 1995, in the St. Cloud GAR Memorial Hall, Beverly Groshek (curator of the GAR hall) uncovered the history of the building as well as a time capsule from 1916. Beverly, along with other dutiful historians, discovered that the original GAR hall was a small wooden building next to the St. Cloud Hotel; when the veterans were given two lots of land on Massachusetts Ave, they moved to the current facility. Beverly and Dan Rogers (a man who worked tirelessly to preserve the history of the hall) discovered a time capsule from 1916 hidden behind a plaque. In March of 1995 a special ceremony was held in which the capsule was opened; all of the times are on display inside GAR Hall, one of them being a photograph of the 14 veterans who lived in St. Cloud, all of whom at some point shook hands with Abraham Lincoln. In the present, the St. Cloud GAR chapter has been working to restore the Union section of Greenwood Cemetery to its past glory.
Interestingly, the graves of Union soldiers in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Civil War memorial section of Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando, Florida were vandalized at an undetermined time. According to Don Price, former sexton of the cemetery, the headstones of the Union veterans were reversed to face the incorrect direction and a cannonball from a memorial statue was stolen in what residents consider to be southern justice.
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