Memorial Day weekend arrives with a full card: raptor feedings and ambassador birthdays at VINS, Dartmouth's wind ensemble Saturday night, Green Day's American Idiot running all week at the Hop, and Molly Tuttle at the Lebanon Opera House. This week's feature looks at how the towns of the Upper Valley have marked Memorial Day for generations -- and why the tradition hits a little differently here.
— The Upper Valley Connections Team
Memorial Day Weekend: Howe Library and Norwich Public Library are closed Sunday May 24 and Monday May 25. Most outdoor attractions remain open.
Over 130 events across the Valley this week -- including Molly Tuttle and Samantha Fish at the Lebanon Opera House, Green Day's American Idiot at the Hop, the VINS Ambassador Birthday Bash, and the Dartmouth Wind Ensemble. Browse everything on the calendar:
See All Events This Week →
Farmers' Markets This Week Lebanon Farmers Market
Tonight — Thu May 21 — 4–7pm — Colburn Park, Lebanon, NH
Produce, baked goods, maple, meat, flowers, live music. Rain or shine. SNAP/EBT accepted.
Norwich Farmers Market
Sat May 23 — 9am–1pm — Route 5 South, Norwich, VT
55+ vendors, live music, rain or shine. SNAP/EBT accepted.
Opening soon: Hartland, VT (Fri May 29, 4–6:30pm · 153 Route 5) — Market on the Green, Woodstock (Wed June 3) — Hanover, NH (Wed June 7, 3–6pm · The Green)
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This Week in Upper Valley History
The Day They Brought the Town to the Green
Every town in the Upper Valley has a green -- Norwich, Woodstock, Hanover, Lebanon -- and on Memorial Day, for most of the past century and a half, those greens have served the same purpose: a place for a town to gather and count its losses.
The tradition started just a few years after the Civil War. In 1868, a Union general named John Logan issued General Order No. 11 designating May 30 as a day to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers. By 1870, most New England towns had already developed their own variations -- processions from the town hall to the cemetery, speeches from the bandstand, local militia members in wool uniforms that were already too warm for late May.
In the Upper Valley, the scale of loss from the Civil War was not small. Towns like Norwich, Thetford, and Cornish sent a substantial fraction of their young men to the war. Vermont and New Hampshire both exceeded their draft quotas. The Dartmouth contingent alone -- faculty, students, and recent graduates -- lost dozens. Many of those names are still legible on the monuments that stand on these same town greens today.
What makes the Upper Valley's Memorial Day tradition somewhat distinctive is the Connecticut River itself. For most of the 19th century, the river divided not just two states but two slightly different communities: New Hampshire's larger towns clustered around commerce, Vermont's smaller agricultural villages spread along the hillsides. Memorial Day, more than almost any other occasion, brought those communities into shared grief. The Windsor-Cornish covered bridge saw regular processional traffic -- families crossing to honor the dead on both sides.
By the early 20th century, the ceremonies had shifted somewhat. The veterans' groups -- Grand Army of the Republic posts through the 1890s, then American Legion posts after World War I -- became the organizing force. The speeches got more formal. The bands got better. The parades grew longer. In Woodstock, the town's unusually intact 19th-century streetscape meant that the processional route remained almost unchanged for decades.
What persists -- and what you can still see this Monday if you find the right town green at the right hour -- is the impulse behind it: to make the loss legible, to say the names out loud, to stand in the same place where people have stood before. Some years the band is good. Some years the speaker is forgettable. Some years it rains. None of that changes what the day is for.
Norwich, Woodstock, and Hanover typically hold Memorial Day observances on Monday morning. Check local town notices for times.
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