This morning while reading about various Memorial Day celebrations being planned in and around Minnesota, Kewanee popped into my mind. Here’s why.
In Henry L. Kiner’s 1910 book, History of Henry County, Illinois, Vol. 1, he wrote that in 1863, Kewaneean Rufus P. Parrish began a tradition of decorating military veterans’ gravesites with flowers. Kiner said that in the same year, Parrish wrote to Union Gen. John A. Logan recommending that it become a national tradition. In 1868, Logan initiated what was then called Decoration Day. I’ve written stories about R. P. Parrish, including repeating Kiner’s assertion.
Around Memorial Day (the name changed in the interim) in May 1903, an article found its way into over 100 Midwest newspapers attributing the motivation for the holiday to Parrish. But strangely, there was only one other article on that subject that I could find before then – Parrish’s obituary in the Kewanee newspaper a month earlier, in April 1903.
Parrish’s son, George Randall Parrish, had been released from prison a little while before his father’s death. The younger Parrish had been convicted of various fraudulent acts a few years earlier. He was a consummate liar and con-man. But in 1904, his first novel (of fiction, of course) was published, and he became a best-selling author. However, his aversion to telling the truth continued until his death, according to current family members.
The younger Parrish was in the process of returning to Kewanee when his father died. Undoubtedly, he would have been the source of at least some of the information about his father which appeared in the obituary. (G. R. Parrish was a friend of Kiner’s and likely was also the source for any biographical information Kiner included in his later book.)
It’s very odd that the elder Parrish’s idea for honoring fallen soldiers was never reported until his death. Unless, of course, the younger Parrish concocted the story from whole cloth.
Just sayin.’
