At last week’s Town Meeting, citizens approved a grant of $11,775 from Harvard’s Community Preservation Committee funds to restore the town’s Civil War tablets.
The request came from Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro, who told the Press that whenever she entered the Town Hall meeting room she was reminded of the poor condition of the tablets. She began the process of asking for money to restore them back in fall 2019.
The tall marble tablets outside the Town Hall meeting room will be restored with CPC funds. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
These marble rosters of the Harvard soldiers and two volunteer nurses who served in the Civil War have had little to no maintenance in their more than 130 years, and in recent decades they have been out of the mainstream public view. With the completed renovation of Town Hall, the tablets were brought there in 2017. They once again hang in a prominent place, outside the meeting room, and are now being given the attention they deserve as an important historical artifact of Harvard. It is fitting, too, that the plan for their restoration was approved just before Memorial Day, because the Civil War and remembrance of those who died in it was the impetus for this holiday.
Three years after the end of the Civil War, General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic called for a “Decoration Day” on May 30. The day was widely celebrated in 1868, and by 1890 every Northern state had adopted it as a holiday. The world wars changed the day from a memorial for those who died in the Civil War to a day of remembrance for all military personnel who have died in American wars. In 1971 Congress standardized the holiday as Memorial Day and changed its observance to the last Monday in May.
Harvard citizens were definitely on board with the observation of a memorial day, though it would be more than two decades before there was physical evidence of their sentiments. According to Henry Nourse in “History of Harvard to 1894,” in 1864 the town “voted to raise $300 to erect a Monument to our brave men who’ve fallen in service—their names to be inscribed thereon.” Since the memorial was not erected until 24 years later, one assumes that the money was difficult to raise, so much having been spent during the war to recruit and support the soldiers. Finally, in 1888 the town’s efforts came to fruition in the dedication of a monument that eventually cost $1,208. It was originally proposed to place the monument in the burial ground, but when the time came, the town authorized its present location on the Common. On Memorial Day of that year the monument was dedicated with what Nourse calls “appropriate ceremonial.”
Meanwhile, Harvard was making plans to honor not only those who died but all those who had served in the Civil War. In the blueprint for a public library on the site of the Elm House hotel, which burned in 1880, provision was included for memorial tablets to bear the names of all soldiers of the town. The library was completed in 1886, and while there is no record of their installation, it must have been soon after that the tablets were affixed to the vestibule wall on either side of the library entrance. As Nourse describes them, each marble slab bears two columns of names incised and gilt, and above the lists, written in all capitals is the legend: “Harvard to her brave sons who have fought for the union in the War of Rebellion.” On the left tablet are 68 names of soldiers, and on the right are names of 64 soldiers and two volunteer nurses.
Nourse acknowledges there are mistakes in the lists—both omissions and mistaken inclusions. He adds, “But similar faults are frequent in such rosters, however laboriously prepared, when made from imperfect town records long after the men and their individual experiences are forgotten by the town’s people.” It was exactly this kind of omission of names that the town War Monument Restoration Committee took such pains to remedy in its recent restoration of the World War II, Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars memorial.
The Civil War tablets are devoid of gilt and are legible only as etched.
By the 1970s the library was running out of space, and in 1982 Town Meeting voted to move the front entrance to a new side entryway to allow more interior space. In that renovation the stone tablets were moved to the lower level, where they were still intact but greatly diminished in their presence. In fact, it was easy to forget about them—out of sight, out of mind. Sobalvarro said even members of the war monuments committee had “kind of forgotten about them.”
The result was further deterioration, a fact fully realized when they were hung in upper Town Hall, flanking entrance doors and in full daylight. As one gets to the landing on the second floor, the matching tablets, each measuring about 3½ by 6½ feet, appear as large slabs of gray stone. It is only on close scrutiny that one can read the legend and names, clearly etched but with no gilt at all. A crack in the left side tablet runs horizontally across it. Sobalvarro said the restorer told her the weight of the stone is safely holding the two pieces together.
Sobalvarro said the work will be done in place and is slated to begin in August and completed by the end of this calendar year. Wood frames will surround each tablet, and each character of the legend and of the names will be re-gilt to make them once again legible. And someday, Sobalvarro said, there may be lights to illuminate them.
