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WATERLOO, N.Y. (AP) - Like almost everyone in this village, pharmacist Henry Welles joined the jubilant crowds at welcome-home parades for Civil War soldiers in 1865. It got him thinking that a solemn day to memorialize those who didn't make it back alive also was needed.
His idea took root on May 5, 1866. The woolen mills along the canal shut down for the day. Banks and grocery stores did too. And scores of villagers marched in mourning, some like Welles visiting all three cemeteries to decorate each veteran's grave with a floral cross.
More than two dozen communities around the United States, from Boalsburg, Pa., to Macon, Ga., and Carbondale, Ill., to Richmond, Va., claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. Yet the official distinction, signed into law by President Johnson in 1966, is held by Waterloo.
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