The grave of Thomas Moffett Jr., a Civil War soldier who died in 1864, is among headstones overturned at Grace Church Cemetery, in Providence.

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The Journal / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE

With grief from the Civil War still fresh in 1868, Rhode Island’s veterans slipped into their old blue Union uniforms and marched in a procession alongside carriages packed with crosses and flowers, to decorate the graves of their friends and brothers who had died fighting the Confederacy.

Their first stop on the very first widely recognized “Decoration Day” –– a holiday established on May 30, 1868, and later renamed Memorial Day –– was Grace Church Cemetery, in the elbow of the intersection of Broad Street and Elmwood Avenue.

The grounds of the graveyard were thick with people that Saturday afternoon. Under steady rain, the former soldiers loaded their arms with flowers and spread out among the tombstones.

As The Journal reported in its next edition:

“Reverently with uncovered heads they bent over the sacred mounds, and literally enveloped them with the choicest floral offerings. The simple rite had a most impressive significance, and few could witness it without tears. It spoke most eloquently of the abiding affection which these veterans cherished for old companions and commanders.”

One of those graves would have been that of Private Thomas Moffett Jr., a member of Battery B, 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery, who died at Campbell Hospital in Washington, D.C., in November 1864, at 12 days past his 19th birthday.

Today, 140 years after his grave was covered in flowers on the first Decoration Day, Moffett’s headstone lies flat on the ground and slowly sinks into the earth.

The nearby stone of Civil War veteran William Moffett, a relative of Thomas Jr. who survived the war and died in 1904, leans awkwardly against its pedestal, having also been knocked down by vandals.

Similar offenses to old ghosts are obvious all around Grace Church Cemetery. Tombstones lay face up on the earth, as if stricken and paralyzed. Others lay face down, mugged from behind.

Seventy-year-old Carl Hintze III visited the graveyard on Wednesday. A half-century ago, he went to the University of Rhode Island, but he hasn’t been a local for a long time. He lives in Hunt, Texas, he says, after a 23-year career in the Air Force, and three tours as a C-130 pilot in Vietnam.

Two branches of his family are buried at Grace cemetery. Every year, Hintze travels here for Memorial Day to tend to their graves.

“It’s what you’re supposed to do,” he says, in an incredulous tone that suggests this should be obvious to everybody.

He planted red geraniums at the Stender and Hintze family stones, which mark the bones of his ancestors. His grandfather, Carl Hintze Sr., died in 1958. Back when he was buried, Grace Church Cemetery was “one of the premier cemeteries in the city,” Hintze says. “It’s gotten rundown. It’s a shame. All these stones turned over?”

THE IDEA for a holiday to commemorate the lives sacrificed in the Civil War came from a national veterans’ group known as the Grand Army of the Republic, which had several posts in Providence in the 1860s. Cities across the country held commemorative services on May 30, 1868, just three years after the muskets fell silent.

On that first Decoration Day holiday, Rhode Island citizens left wreaths and flowers for the event at local stores designated to receive the donations. People gathered for the procession at Exchange Place, now known as Kennedy Plaza, in Providence. Col. Edwin Metcalf delivered the keynote remarks. Speaking of the war dead, he said:

“On far off battlefields, on ocean and river, in camp and hospital, they have gone to their rest. Ours be the duty and privilege to keep green their graves and to cherish their memories with that warmth of affection which time shall not abate.”

Grace Episcopal Church owns the nine-acre cemetery. The church places flags at the graves of veterans on Memorial Day, and cares for the graveyard as best the church can afford, says the Rev. Robert Brooks, the church rector. “We have an obligation to the people buried there,” he said.

But the cemetery’s endowment is less than $100,000, and parishioners cannot afford to pay for machinery and masons to repair the damage to the headstones, he said. “It’s a very difficult thing to remedy.”

The deterioration of Grace Church Cemetery has caused a lot of hand-wringing since at least the 1970s. A Brown University student journalism project in 2002 highlighted the lives of exceptional people buried at Grace, in hopes of raising interest in renovating the cemetery.

Now, the cemetery where Memorial Day was born in Rhode Island needs a benefactor who can’t stand the sight of American flags fluttering over desecrated graves.

“We have a comprehensive plan to do something about it, but it’s pretty much pie-in-the-sky right now,” said Mr. Brooks. He estimates the project needs $1 million. “We don’t have it. We don’t have it.”

marsenau@projo.com