LYNN – The Grand Army of the Republic Hall and Museum (G.A.R.) held its annual Memorial Day ceremony at Pine Grove Cemetery Civil War Lot. This year’s event was planned to include a key speaker to honor the 54th regiment from Massachusetts that was known as the Black Volunteer Regiment (BVR). Joe Zellner, who represents the BVR reenactment group, was unable to participate last minute due to traffic, but his message was not lost.
According to Zellner, the current BVR is a reenactment group and a historical society, and every member of it focuses on adopting an actual member of the 54th regiment of the past to “form a character to reenact and represent it to the public.”
Zellner chose to represent Solomon Pierce from Monson, MA, to portray the notion of “all gave some, some gave all,” i.e., to explain to the public the sacrifice the first BVR members gave for their country, even knowing that “you might die sooner than your appointed day by virtue of military service.”
“This particular Black family, they gave their all,” said Zellner.
He said that in the Pierce family, after their first son died in the Civil War in 1863, his father, Solomon, and their second son, aged 19, decided to join the army. They survived and came back home.
According to Wendy Joseph, the G.A.R. Museum curator, the 54th BVR is also a direct link to a very important battle of Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863 that was an unsuccessful assault led by the 54th Massachusetts African American infantry, famously depicted in the movie Glory (1989).
“It’s an annual memorial Service that G.A.R. does since 1868,” said Wendy Joseph, the G.A.R. Museum curator.
The event is sponsored by Camp 5 Sons of Union Veterans. The special thing about this year’s ceremony was that it featured the original service or “Order of Exercise” of Camp 5 that Joseph found online, and that service included the hymn that was used by the original members of Camp 5.
At the memorial service it was read by Dexter Bishop, the G.A.R. Museum trustee. The hymn reads as follows, “Who, when our land was rife with terror, storm, and strife, so nobly gave his life, and freedom won.”
“I think it has so much to say about why we are here today,” said Bishop.
Rev. Edwin Murphy from the First Baptist Church of Lynn gave the invocation at this year’s ceremony, and Camp 5 Commander Paul Kenworthy led the memorial service that ended in a salute.
According to Kenworthy, Camp 5 is the descendant organization of G.A.R., and that was the first veterans organization in the U.S. to allow enlisted men to join, although there were organizations for officers before that.
“We are here to commemorate these men who fought for our union and died in their service,” said Kenworthy.
Kenworthy reminded the visitors that Memorial Day, which later became a national holiday, was originally introduced by G.A.R. over 150 years ago as a Decoration Day to decorate the graves of the fallen soldiers.
Today the descendants of veterans still put flowers on the graves of the soldiers who lost their lives in the Civil War, and the residents come to honor their relatives.
“My great-grandfather, Charles Pendexter, is buried here, and it’s a way to honor him and his memory,” said Patti Pendexter, trustee of the G.A.R.
Laura Eisener, member of Civil War Round Table, a discussion group on the Civil War, said that she and her husband had been participating in this memorial service for the last decade and a half, because they wanted “to remember the Civil War soldiers who fought to end slavery and preserve the Union.”
Oksana Kotkina can be reached at [email protected].
