Information Sheet

 

 

R         Grand Army of the Republic.  Picket Post No. 215 (Farmington, Mo.).

131                  Records, 1884-1902.

                                    Three volumes.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are minute books, 1884-1902, and a membership book, 1884-1894, of the Grand Army of the Republic’s post in St. Francois County, Missouri.  The chapter was organized in 1884 as the Bonne Terre Post.  It was moved to Farmington and renamed Picket Post in 1887.

 

The Grand Army of the Republic was a national society of veterans of Federal service dur­ing the Civil War.  It was primarily a fraternal organization, dedicated to the principals of “fraternity, charity, and loyalty.”

 

The first local chapter in St. Francois County, Missouri, was the “Bonne Terre Post.”  It was or­ganized in 1884 by a group of veterans that included two officers of the St. Joseph Lead Com­pany.  Regular monthly meetings were held in Bonne Terre until 21 May 1887, when the post was moved to Farmington to take advantage of a larger potential membership.  The name was changed to “Picket Post” at that time, but the post number 215 remained as designated by the headquarters of the Department of Missouri.

 

The records of the post include the minutes of meetings, beginning with the organiza­tional session on 11 October 1884 and continuing through 1902, and a roster of members, 1884-1894.  Generally the minutes concern routine business matters such as the recruitment and muster of new members, the election of representatives to state and national meetings, and plans for cere­monial Memorial Day observances and funerals of deceased members.  Oc­casionally the post authorized relief payments to needy veterans, and sometimes it paid burial expenses for indigent comrades.  Only once do the minutes indicate that the post violated a national resolution to re­main politically non-partisan, when it adopted a resolution in February 1892 that protested the passage of the “Free Coinage Silver Bill.”  However, the resolution was challenged and with­drawn at the next meeting.  The last meeting recorded in this collec­tion took place on 14 June 1902.

 

Communications from state and local headquarters have been filed following Volume 2.  They include lists of posts in Missouri whose charters had been suspended or revoked.

 

 

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