I first remember in the late 1940s our family's going for Decoration Days at the cemeteries where our ancestors were buried. That was shortly after the end of World War II, and many of the local families had fresh memories of their soldiers who were casualties in the war. I remember that it seemed so natural and right that we should be visiting and decorating the graves of the soldier boys, especially those who had died in overseas combat.
Decoration Days at the cemeteries were major observances in those days. But the idea of a Decoration Day was not new. It was shortly after the Civil War that people began to set a special day of remembrance for their war dead, and a special time to pay respects to their family's deceased forebears by decorating the graves with flowers. Today, now that rather nice artificial flower arrangements are available, many people keep flowers on their loved ones' graves all the time. That was not the case in the old days. There were no artificial flowers in the 1940s, or at least those that were becoming available looked bad; not at all life-like. So when we had a Decoration Day, we were decorating graves with fresh cut flowers, or with living flowers in pots. If one wanted flowers on the graves at other times of the year, it was necessary to plant flowers on the graves. Those flowers would then bloom in season, but they required care and maintenance.
A Decoration Day in the old days was like a big community-wide family reunion. Often relatives who had moved to distant states would return "home" for Memorial Day observances and for Decoration Days. It was just something we did together as a larger family, often bringing together once a year the distant uncles and aunts and cousins. Gatherings at the cemetery on Decoration Day often involved activities through much of the day, with open-air church services in the morning, with outdoor singing and praying and preaching. Then there would be pot-luck dinner on the grounds, and times when we kids could play and everybody could rekindle acquaintances and reminisce. In my family, it was relatives from California, who had found work in the aircraft industry in Los Angeles during the war, who would return "home" for Memorial Day and Decoration Days at the cemeteries. For us, the Decoration Day at the cemetery was a highlight of our big family reunion which would take place over several days.
In the early days of my life, our old family cemeteries were the Pratt Cemetery on Old Wire Road near today's Pea Ridge National Military Park, and the City Cemetery at Elm Springs, Ark. It was at the Pratt Cemetery that my great-grandparents, John Wesley Nichols and Melinda Hall Nichols, were buried. They had lived from about 1910 to the early 1940s on the old family orchard farm about a mile west of the cemetery on Old Wire Road. The area was considered to be part of the Brightwater Community, sometimes known as Bestwater. Brightwater was a small town on the railroad between Avoca and Garfield. In 1947, the little town of Brightwater was mostly destroyed by a tornado, and the town never recovered. The church where my great-grandparents attended was one of the tornado losses. After the tornado, the church relocated to U.S. Highway 62 near the Sugar Creek bridge north of Avoca, meeting in an old World War I Army Air Corp Chapel building which was moved from Neosho's Camp Crowder.
The Holcomb side of my family, my grandmother Ellen's family, had roots at Elm Springs and Springdale. Several generations of the Holcombs lived on farm land just east of Elm Springs, from the late 1880s until the 1980s. Several of our more distant Nichols relatives had also made their early homes at Elm Springs. I always thought it is was fascinating that the Holcomb family was strong for the southern side in the Civil War, with several Confederate officers in the family, while the Nichols family, with roots in Ohio, were very much Yankee sympathizers. Yet by the early 1900s, the Nichols and the Holcomb of Elm Springs had become close friends and neighbors, and my grandfather, Scott Nichols had married Sarah Ellen Holcomb, who would become my grandmother.
Especially since 1929, when my grandparents moved to the Pea Ridge farm, the Nichols family has had ties with the Pea Ridge Cemetery, and my grandparents are buried there in the old part of the cemetery. Most of my mother's family relatives were buried at the Bentonville City Cemetery.
I'm hoping that people do not allow Decoration Day traditions to die away. It is easy to think of Memorial Day as a time to go camping or boating or swimming at the lake, or to cook barbecue at home. I believe it is still a sound and good thing that we set aside times to remember those who have gone before us, who have given us the land of freedom in which we live, and have protected it with their lives and their devotion.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 05/20/2015