Dozens of wreaths are placed at the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary Soldier Feb. 21 at the Old Presbyterian Meeting house.
A visitor places a flower at the site of the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary Soldier Feb. 21 at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House.
Visitors were provided with a flower as they entered the graveyard, with each attendee taking part in the ceremony by placing the flower on the Tomb of the Unknown, which was guarded by members of the First Virginia Regiment.
The ceremony follows the traditions of the U. S. Army full honor wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery as well as from descriptions from the Revolutionary War.
The remains of the unidentified man, clothed in a Revolutionary War uniform, were unearthed in 1826 during the construction of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which is located immediately next to the churchyard of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House. The body was reinterred in the Meeting House Burial Ground.
The epitaph at the Tomb reads:
“Here lies a soldier of the Revolution whose identity is known but to God. His was an idealism that recognized a Supreme Being, that planted religious liberty on our shores, that overthrew despotism, that established a people's government, that wrote a Constitution setting metes and bounds of delegated authority, that fixed a standard of value upon men above gold and lifted high the torch of civil liberty along the pathway of mankind. In ourselves his soul exists as part of ours, his memory's mansion.”