to Washington, D.C. and meeting her husband General Logan at the railroad station, she related the story of her visit to Petersburg and how she was moved by what she witnessed there. Upon hearing her story, General Logan, now the first Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), replied to her that he would work establish this custom of honoring fallen soldiers across the country. He issued an GAR order, establishing a National Decoration Day, which was later passed by Congress. Today it is known as Memorial Day. In 2014, Bellware and Gardiner dismissed this claim in The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America . They point out that General Logan was aware of the southern observances of Memorial Day prior to his wife’s trip to Virginia in 1868 and even mentioned those observances in a speech in 1866 Bellware and Gardiner credit Mary Ann Williams and the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia as the true originators of the holiday as abundant contemporaneous evidence from across the nation exists to substantiate the claim. In fact, a copy of Mrs. Williams' famous letter urging the ladies of the South to annually decorate the soldiers' graves appeared in a Richmond newspaper more than two months before Miss Nora and her school children acted on the request. See also Confederate Memorial Day Uniform Monday Holiday Act References 1836 births 1929 deaths Women in the American Civil War People of Virginia in the American Civil War