"Veterans' Legacy"

Last year, Nick Smith gave a talk on some of the Civil War veterans who made the Pasadena area their home before or after the war. He also spoke on their impact on the development of the community. As a result of his continuing research on those veterans, there is now a Part II, touching on the lives of more of those veterans and their influence on the development of the Pasadena area. The talk will especially focus on the members of the John F. Godfrey Post, Grand Army of the Republic, and also on the other local organizations related to the Civil War.

From its founding in 1885 until its final member died in 1946, there was a post of the Grand Army of the Republic in Pasadena. There were also chapters of the Women's Relief Corps, Sons of Union Veterans, Daughters of Union Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy and various auxiliaries and related organizations, all with the Civil War as their source in some way. Their impact on the community was enormous, both socially and structurally. Everything from road building to the Tournament of Roses was influenced by these men and women.

The final resting place of many of these men and women is at the local Mountain View Cemetery, and Nick has been photographing the graves of the veterans and their families there.

This talk will be a blend of local history and the stories of Civil War veterans who not only marched home, but marched west to build new homes and an entire city, called Pasadena.

Nick Smith, who is president of the Civil War Round Table of the San Gabriel Valley, is a library technician at the Pasadena Public Library. He has been a bookseller, a game designer, a radio broadcaster, a typographer and a storyteller, and his interest in the Civil War dates back to his childhood, when he encountered the books of Bruce Catton, along with a board game called Gettysburg. He found both to be fascinating, and has accumulated way too many Civil War books and games as a result.

Please join us as we learn more about how the Civil War veterans influenced our local history.

 

Janet Whaley
Program Chair

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