Every year for Memorial Day flags are placed throughout country at the graves of our veterans. In Newbury these flags are placed at First Parish Burying Ground, Thomas Parker Cemetery, First Settler’s Burying Ground, Evergreen Cemetery, Old Town Cemetery, Newbury Neck Cemetery, Old Byfield Burying Ground, and the Byfield Cemetery. Between all of these cemeteries roughly 750 flags are place each year.
Newbury is the final resting place of veterans who have served in wars such as the American Revolutionary War, the French and Indian War, War of 1812, Civil War, World War I, World War II, and even wars as recent as Iraq/Afghanistan. After this time there is at least one confirmed resting place of an unknown Civil War veteran who is resting at the First Parish Burying Ground in Newbury.
Memorial Day weekend generally leads to a lot of visitors at the burying grounds and cemeteries throughout the country. It is not uncommon for you to see an increase of people visiting, rather it be family or service members visiting their fellow veterans of whom they may have serve with.
People leave things at gravestones for several different reasons. For example, we place flags for Memorial Day. When we place flags we are honoring those who served and honoring the families of those who have served. Besides leaving flags at the veteran’s graves other veterans can tend to leave different kinds of coins. Sometimes there are Challenge Coins, and sometimes they are coins like pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. These coins have distinct meanings when left on a veteran’s headstones & these meanings vary depending on the denomination of coin.
A coin left on a headstone or at the grave site is meant as a message to the deceased soldier’s family that someone else has visited the grave to pay respect. Here is a breakdown on what the different coins meean.
- Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you visited.
- Leaving a nickel indicates that you & the deceased trained at boot camp together
- Leavings a dime means you served with him in some capacity.
- Leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the solider when he was killed.
Every year we are always looking for people who may be interesting in helping. If you are interested send me an email. I would love have you be part of this. Email me we would love to have you join us!
Donald Jarvis 