The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
5 MAY 1868 · THE GAR ORDER FROM WHICH THE TOWN'S OBSERVANCE DESCENDS
Memorial Day in North Liberty began as a Grand Army post's duty, under an order that fixed the day and left the ceremony to the posts. General Order No. 11, Headquarters, Grand Army of the Republic, Washington, D.C., 5 May 1868, issued by Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan (Adjutant General N. P. Chipman), designated 30 May 1868 for strewing flowers and decorating the graves of comrades who died in defence of their country during the late rebellion — and prescribed no fixed form: local posts were to arrange their own observances. In this town that duty belonged, from 1883 to 1913, to Post No. 197 (the veterans file carries the post, and the conflict over its name); the order's design — a local body, a cemetery, decorated graves — is still the shape of the town's one fully dated observance a century later.
General Order No. 11 (5 May 1868), text as carried by the VA National Cemetery Administration's history page and Historical Marker Database transcriptions.