A Struggle Never Forgotten

Americans’ ways of honoring important places and expressing what they mean changed over time. In the early 1800s, only stories kept the memory of Saratoga’s battles alive. After the Civil War, Americans wanted memorials made of stone, and the earliest monuments here were created through the work of the Saratoga Monument Association, with interested individuals and the Daughters of the American Revolution joining that effort. In time, the battlefield’s fields and woods themselves became a monument to all who served here. Ellen Walworth was one of Saratoga Battlefield’s earliest preservationists. She helped found the DAR and, as a trustee of the Saratoga Monument Association, chaired the Committee on Tablets and established the first monuments. She wrote, “Let our hurrying crowds pause for a time before the monument or the tablet … they will find incentive for nobler action beyond.” The 1928 Memorial Pavilion once provided shaded seating for visitors but can no longer be seen, and the 1931 Monument to the Unknown American Dead stands here.

Stillwater, New York · United States