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Union Soldier
Statue and Memorial
Or What’s
a soldier like you doing in a state like this?
Photos courtesy Mike Price |
| In
1906 when thousands of aging Confederate Veterans across the South
were raising money to erect statues of themselves as young troops,
the same thought occurred to Union Veterans who had formed a chapter
of the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) in Denison
(North Texas).
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"Grand
Army of the Republic" Inscription
Photo Courtesy Mike Price, September 2007 |
According
to the statue’s entry in A Comprehensive Guide to Outdoor Sculpture
in Texas by Carol Morris Little (UT Press, 1996), the statue is
thought to have been ordered from a catalog, while the base was provided
by the owner of Denison Marble Works, one A. P. Chamberlain.
The 1861 Grayson County’s vote on succession was nearly 2-1 in favor
of keeping Texas in the Union. In 1884 forty Union veterans formed
the Nathaniel Lyon Post 5 Chapter of the GAR and it was this group
(aided by Chapter 2 of the Women’s Relief Corps) who paid for the
statue. |
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| The
statue is also a memorial for six former Union troops who are interred
here. The memorial is in the Fairview Cemetery, Just N of Denison
and Highway 75-A. |
Nathaniel
Lyon, whom the GAR post was named after, was a Union General
Photo Courtesy Mike Price, September 2007 |
Tombstone
of one one of the six Union troops interred in the Cemetery
Photo Courtesy Mike Price, September 2007 |
While
this is the only true monument to Union troops (plural) in Texas,
there is also the smashed torso of a Union officer in Bushdale
Cemetery (Milam County), the “Treue Der Union” obelisk in Comfort,
Texas which marks the remains of newly-arrived German Immigrants who
refused to join the Confederacy and remained “True to the Union.”
The men were killed at the Battle of Nueces and interred in the small
park just a block north of downtown Comfort.
The Treue Der Union monument is on the National Register of Historic
Places.
There are, of course, many individual graves of Union soldiers scattered
among rural and city cemeteries
across Texas. |
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