The Memorialization Movement and the Saratoga Monument Association

Composite photo: TOP LEFT a tall, granite obelisk; TOP RIGHT, a woman in ornate dress and holding a sword; BOTTOM LEFT, a bearded man in a suit; BOTTOM RIGHT, a small, granite monument.

Ellen Hardin Walworth photo (top right): courtesy Saratoga Springs History Museum. George West photo (bottom left): Nathaniel Sylvester's "History of Saratoga County." Other photos: Saratoga NHP.

Preserving history and healing wounds: what can one person do?

What roles can individuals fill in commemorating historical events, and key figures involved, both preserving history and healing societal wounds?

Ravaged by the Civil War (1861-1865), the United States faced this question. A late 19^th-century national undercurrent arose and responded.

This was the birth of the Memorialization Movement. It forged ahead by looking back to a comparatively unified cause: the American War for Independence (1775-1783).

Some affluent, prominent Saratoga-area citizens, calling themselves the Saratoga Monument Association, also responded. In the 1850s, they planned to construct a monument commemorating America’s victory in the Battles of Saratoga (1777). While looming war paused their plans, afterward they continued.

From 1877-1883, they established the 155-foot Saratoga Monument, just north of Saratoga Battlefield. Conspicuously honoring the Saratoga victory, it also, at least subconsciously, offered healing with reminders of some unity in the American War for Independence.

The Monument complete, Association members looked southward to the still unmarked Saratoga Battlefield. Board member Ellen Hardin Walworth led a “Committee on Tablets” that established 13 stone markers along public roadways within the Battlefield (1883-1887).

These markers were sponsored by locals interested in history—either professionally (like Civil War General John Watts de Peyster), personally (like British-born Ballston Spa paper mill owner George West), or as descendants (like Walworth, and Virginia Melville Taylor, whose monument text laments the “noble” British officer her great-grandfather was “forced…to slay”). The sponsors chose the monuments’ wording. Products of their time, they often bordered on poetic, with accurate history we expect today supplanted by wistfulness and ambience.

Walworth, though, recognized the markers were relatively inexpensive, enduring, easily viewed, natural teaching tools and opportunities for hurried passersby to pause, reflect, and find inspiration.

Walworth’s question to all—then and now— might be, “What’s YOUR role in commemorating history and offering healing?”