This photo was taken Memorial Day in 1939 on Main Street, Monson. The Monson band was formed in Sept. of 1887 and continued to entertain until the 1950s.
Also in the photo are members of the American Legion Post No. 116 and the Ladies Auxiliary.
The Towne-Holmbom Post was started March 1, 1921 in Monson with 16 charter members. The Auxiliary was begun Dec. 12, 1922 with 38 charter members. The American Legion post was named in honor of Oral A. Towne, a soldier killed in action July 22, 1918 in Bois, France. On Sept. 24, 1951 the Monson Post voted to change the name to Towne-Holmbom in honor of Mr. Towne and Lawrence Holmbom. The latter died in England during WWII.
The silent policeman or traffic guide stood in the town square in the 1930s and 40s. The large square building with the hose tower was the town office and fire dept. and it also served as a basketball court on the second floor, once was a meeting location for Juanita Grange No 396, G.A.R. post, D.A.R. and is currently the location of the Monson Historical Society Museum.
A Memorial Day parade, ca. 1940, at Deer Isle. This is part of the Benjamin Lake Noyes collection, 1870-1945, that includes a large number of photographs of Deer Isle, Grand Manan Island and Atkinson.
Members of veterans organizations and the Gold Star Mothers place wreaths on the monument to Civil War dead in Monument Square, Portland, following a large parade down Congress Street, May 25, 1981.
Gene Willman, the photographer, worked for the Kennebec Journal. The cut line reads: "esw/Gene Willman.
Civil War hero Gen. Chamberlain (1828-1914) lies buried at the Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Lot #4 on the right side. He led the 20th Maine to an important victory at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg.
In 1862 a grieving Gray family opened a coffin that was supposed to contain the body of their son. Instead they found the body of a stranger, a confederate soldier in uniform.
The gravestone reads, "Stranger, A soldier of the late war died 1862, Erected by the ladies of Gray."
Alonzo Palmer Stinson was the first soldier from Portland killed in the Civil War. He was 19 when he died at the Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. He was a sergeant in Company H of the Fifth Maine Volunteer Regiment, which mustered in June of 1861.
A memorial in Eastern Cemetery was dedicated to A. Stinson on July 4, 1908.
Alonzo's brother Harry was also in Company H; he stayed on the battlefield with his brother after Alonzo was wounded by a cannonball. Harry was captured by the Confederates and was imprisoned for over a year. After getting out of prison he returned to the war as an officer in the Volunteers Aide-de-Camp Infantry Regiment. He died of disease, "in the service of his country," on Feb. 22, 1866.
The gravestone of Charles F. Brown is in Elm Vale Cemetery in South Waterford.
The stone reads:"Rest loved one rest, Charles F. Brown known to the world as Artemus Ward, died in South Hampton, England March 6,1867 aged 33 years. His memory will live as a sweet and unfading recollection."
This headstone marks the grave of Joshua Allen, buried at Eastern Cemetery in Portland in 1805. The sun-like face probably represents the everlasting life of the soul.
The headstone of Deacon Samuel Ford, buried in Woolwich in 1787, shows an angel, the symbol of judgment and resurrection, blowing a trumpet, the symbol of the announcement of the soul's entrance into heaven. The trumpet is sending a warning, "Know ye the Hour."
The headstone of twenty-one soldiers who died in a local hospital. They had been captured by the British during the War of 1812 and were being taken to Boston when they died.
The granite monument erected by the State of Maine in 1855 in memory of William King, Maine's first governor, at his burial site in Maple Grove Cemetery, Bath.
Following King's funeral in 1852, the Masonic lodge in Bath, of which he had been a charter member and Grand Master, organized a procession, led by the Bath Brass Band and including local and state governmental officials, through Bath to the burial plot in Maple Grove Cemetery.
Also buried at that site are wife Ann, children Mary Elizabeth and Cyrus William, and Cyrus' wife, Sarah.
Chris Ranco looks at the grave of his uncle, Louis Sockalexis, who is buried on Indian Island, Old Town. Sockalexis was a baseball player for whom the Cleveland Indians are named.
