Annual Westminster Memorial Day Parade Steeped in Tradition

By Kevin Dayhoff 

The annual Carroll Post 31 American Legion Westminster Memorial Day Parade steps off at 10 a.m. today. The parade will begin at the west end of town at Monroe Street and continue down Pennsylvania Avenue; it will go east on Main Street to Church Street, then to the Westminster Cemetery for the memorial service at 11 a.m.

The tradition of the parade and ceremony in Westminster began in 1868, when Mary Bostwick Shellman followed General John A. Logan’s May 5th, 1868 General Order No. 11 to adorn the graves of Union soldiers with flowers.

She gathered a group of schoolchildren for the task and they walked from an old schoolhouse on Center Street to Westminster Cemetery.

In 1868, the cemetery's focal point was the Union Meeting House of Westminster.  Since the summer of 1891, the Memorial Day services have been held at a large urn, located on the knoll immediately in view as one enters the cemetery from Church Street.

As much as the urn has become one of the many visual icons of our community—such as the clock tower on the old fire hall on Main Street in Westminster, or the historic courthouse on Court Street—most folks are not aware of what the urn represents.

As the early settlers first came together as a community in 1764, one of the first focal points of our community was the Union Meeting House of Westminster.

The urn marks the location of the Old Union Church Building  that was “50 feet long by 40 feet wide and 25 feet high … built of superior quality of brick, with walls 18 inches thick,” as described by a July 18, 1891 newspaper article announcing its public sale.

Currently it is accepted that the brick meeting house was preceded by a log structure that may have been constructed around 1790. But, there are numerous references to a structure as early as 1760, four years before the founder of Westminster, William Winchester, drew a plat plan for what was then known as “Winchester’s Town,” now known as Westminster.

Construction of the brick Union Meeting House began in 1800.  It was completed in 1811. (Historical accounts referring to the brick structure being built in 1760 are now disputed.)  “Carroll County Cemeteries” reports that “in 1808, it was still incomplete because records show local residents were granted permission for a lottery to raise funds to purchase a fire engine and complete the church.”

Various historic accounts refer to the building being used as a hospital after the Battle of Westminster on June 29, 1863, otherwise known as “Corbit’s Charge,” and other references say it was also used as a hospital after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863.

It is currently well accepted that the Westminster community started the Westminster Cemetery by utilizing the 1.5-acre grounds surrounding the Union Meeting House as a burial ground in 1790. 

The first burial is believed to be that of Christian Yingling, who died on January 24, 1790. Although one well-respected history research institution says  “the ground around it had been used as a cemetery as early as 170,”  today, there are more than 5,000 gravestones in the cemetery. 

This includes the graves of city founder William Winchester and a number of Westminster mayors, burgesses, and other city and county elected officials. Also buried there are Western Maryland College presidents; a baseball player killed in a train wreck; and a Civil War veteran, according to Harold J. Robertson of Westminster, who serves as treasurer of the genealogical society and is a member of the Westminster Cemetery board.