Just twenty short minutes from the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, PA, is the small community of Boalsburg. The village is home to the Pennsylvania Military Museum, Tussey Mountain Ski and Recreation, and countless historic buildings – and also claims to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. Though other towns and hamlets vie with Boalsburg for the title, we couldn’t turn down the opportunity to show off the history of the area the APS calls home.
Check out our visit to Boalsburg and the Boalsburg Heritage Museum, where volunteer docent Barbara Grignano told us about Boalsburg’s claim to Memorial Day.
Memorial Day in Boalsburg
The village now known as Boalsburg was first founded as Springfield, Pennsylvania in 1809. By 1819, thanks to the strong milling industry and its location on the routes from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Springfield had grown enough to support three taverns (one of which, Duffy’s Tavern, still stands today); by 1820, they warranted a post office.
According to the Centre County Historical Society, prior to 1820, mail for the people of Springfield was dropped at “an old pine tree on top of a hill,” a distinctive local landmark. The arrival of the post office (and some semblance of order) seems to have inspired the locals to sort themselves out municipally; a vote was taken to combine the west end of town (referred to as Boalsburg after the prominent Boal family who had a large hand in settling the region) and the village of Springfield proper, taking the name Boalsburg when the merger was set.
Boalsburg’s claim to Memorial Day starts with another community fixture: a school. The Boalsburg Academy was a paid academy for older students that opened in 1853, and at the outbreak of the Civil War just nine years later, a man named James Patterson (presumably no relation) was the headmaster of the Academy. After a call for volunteers from President Abraham Lincoln, Patterson announced to the academy that he planned to enlist, which reportedly encouraged one hundred and twenty-seven men from Boalsburg to join the Union Army, forming a large part of Company G of the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers.
The headstone of Dr. Reuben Hunter in the Boalsburg cemetery.
One hundred and twenty-seven men is a large number for a community as small as Boalsburg to lose to military service – and as Company G fought at Gettysburg, many of them did not return. One such man was Private Amos Myers, who died on the third day of Gettysburg. Another prominent villager, Dr. Reuben Hunter, died of disease in the fall of 1864. In October of 1864, three women met to lay flowers on the men’s graves – Dr. Hunter’s daughter, Emma Hunter; her friend, Sophie Keller; and Private Myers’ mother, Elizabeth Myers.
The story holds that while laying flowers on the graves, the women thought they should return at a future date to decorate the grave of every soldier. They decided to return for Independence Day of 1865 – and so they did, as did other villagers who assisted the women in decorating the graves. There has been some sort of celebration honoring fallen soldiers in Boalsburg every year since, whether in July or on the official Memorial Day, which has been a federal holiday since 1868.
In 1991, the USPS honored the 125th anniversary of another “first Memorial Day,” claimed by Waterloo, New York, with the Flags On Parade stamp. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
Today, the village celebrates Memorial Day in style, hosting parades, an arts and crafts festival, a car show, and the annual Fire Company carnival, all of which draw thousands of attendees from miles around. But in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion, Boalsburg also marks the holiday with a procession to the very graves where Emma Hunter, Sophie Keller, and Elizabeth Myers first laid flowers. Now, visitors to that graveyard will see a life-size bronze statue of the three women, which the town dedicated in their honor in 2000, 136 years after Boalsburg’s first Memorial Day.
The memorial to Emma Hunter, Sophie Keller, and Elizabeth Myers in Boalsburg shows the women regarding the grave of Dr. Reuben Hunter. Dr. Hunter and other Boalsburg residents who died in the Civil War are buried just steps away in the village's one cemetery.
If you find yourself in the State College area, whether you’re taking in a football game or visiting the American Philatelic Center, make sure to take in some of the local history of the area – and why not plan on taking in the Memorial Day festivities in Boalsburg next year?
Recommended Reading
If you’d like to read more about Boalsburg’s Memorial Day bona fides, Barbara Grignano of the Boalsburg Heritage Museum recommends the following books:
A War, Three Women, and a Tradition: The History of Boalsburg in the Civil War by Susan Evans, Robert Hazelton, Cathy Horner, and Nancy Taylor
Shadows of War: Prelude to the First Memorial Day, a middle-grade historical novel by Janice Sweet McElhoe
You can find these and other publications from the Boalsburg Heritage Museum here.
The Penn State University Libraries have made the letters of James T. Stuart, Civil War veteran and husband of Emma Hunter, available to view online. You can find them here.
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