A Struggle Never Forgotten

A Struggle Never Forgotten. . , How Americans choose to honor important places and what they mean changes over time. In the early 1800s only stories kept the memories of Saratoga's battles alive. After the Civil War Americans wanted memorials made of stone. The earliest monuments you might see here are the work of the Saratoga Monument Association. Interested individuals and the Daughters of the American Revolution joined in that effort. In time, the fields and woods of the battlefield itself became a monument to all who served here., Ellen Walworth was one of Saratoga Battlefield’s earliest preservationists. She helped found the DAR. As a trustee for the Saratoga Moment Association, she chaired the Committee on Tablets and set up the first monuments. Walworth wrote, "Let our hurrying crowds pause for a time before the monument or the tablet … they will find incentive for nobler action beyond", Ellen Hardin Walworth, ca. 1895, You can no longer see the 1928 Memorial Pavilion that once provided shaded seating for visitors. The 1931 Monument to the Unkown American Dead stands before you.