Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/383

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The First Confederate Memorial Day.
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been shot down. When I called to him to let me carry the flag, saying, too, that he would be killed, he replied, calmly: "Lieutenant, your life is worth as much as mine." I did not think of the awkward looks of a Virginian carrying a North Carolina flag for them, and I do not know whether the General did or not. The morning after the battle of Frazier's Farm, June 30, 1862, I was detailed to take command of forty-five skirmishers to charge the bluecoats out of a barn, and when we started at double quick it looked like going into the jaws of death. We were greatly relieved when the enemy hoisted the white flag and surrendered, sixty-two of them, for the whole Yankee Army had left the night previous for Malvern Hill.

R. D. Funkhouser.

Maurertown, Shenandoah Co., Va., 1906.


From the Times-Dispatch, July 15, 1906.


THE FIRST CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY.


How many of our States claim the first memorial organization? What matters if there are no records to prove it? New Orleans claims it; Georgia claims it; Portsmouth, Va.; Richmond, Va., claim it. But the little village of Warrenton, Va., claims, and can prove it, the first Confederate Memorial Day. Killed in skirmish at Fairfax Courthouse, June 1, 1861, Captain John Quincy Marr, Warrenton Rifles, I7th Virginia Regiment, buried in the little village graveyard, June 3rd, with military honors; wept over by the old and young; flowers strewn on his grave, and the first Confederate Memorial Day was observed. After the first battle of Manassas, July 21, 1861, the dead and mortally wounded, numbering many, were brought to this same little village, and again memorial day was observed by the women and children. Was this, the women's work, discontinued? No, organized; no, but the spontaneous outburst