The Grand Army of the Republic
was a patriotic society of Union Army veterans founded in 1866 to strengthen
the fraternal spirit, to perpetuate the memory, and to assist needy Civil
War veterans and their families. In Modesto, Grand Post #9, GAR, received
its charter on July 9, 1879, and proud members later marched in parades,
arranged military funerals, and honored veterans with a permanent memorial
located in the local cemetery.
The Modesto Citizens' Cemetery, Modesto's oldest, was laid
out in 1872 soon after the founding of the town. The Modesto Cemetery
Association deeded the section known as the "Grand Army Plot," which is the
final resting place of thirty-eight of the veterans, to Grant Post #9 on
March 4, 1882. Through the efforts of James L. Thompson and Grant Post #9,
two Civil War-era cannons were secured and placed in this plot as a memorial
to the veterans in 1907. The War Department provided twenty-six military
headstones. A cenotaph, given by the local American Legion Post honoring the
few remaining veterans, was added to complete the memorial in 1925. A second
GAR cemetery plot was added in 1908. The deed to this plot was signed by the
cemetery trustee, L. B. Walthall, himself a civic-minded, Confederate
veteran.
Some one hundred thirty veterans out of the almost two
hundred identified Civil War veterans buried throughout Stanislaus County
are interred in the four adjoining cemeteries located along Scenic Drive and
once known as "The Silent City." These veterans, Union and Confederate,
represent a variety of states including California. After the War, many
veterans brought their families by wagon and later by train to establish a
new and better life and to trade the horrors and isolation of an earlier
time for the realization of dreams of peace and prosperity in a new,
undivided land.
