Today is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, what in the United States we now know as Veterans Day. The first Armistice Day celebration marked the one-year anniversary of the end of the first World War.
From the New York Tribune, November 11, 1919 (image courtesy of www.fultonhistory.com)
100 years ago on this day, in a message to the nation, President Woodrow Wilson wrote of the end of this devastating global conflict:
“Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men.
To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations.”
President Woodrow Wilson’s “Messages to the Nation,” New York Tribune, November 11, 1919 (from www.fultonhistory.com)
Thank you to all the veterans, past and present, for your sacrifices for all the freedoms we enjoy. Thank you also to the families of veterans, for all of your sacrifices—your time away from your loves ones ensures my time with my loved ones.
Do you have any veterans in your family tree? I talk about my Civil War veteran and my grandfather, a World War II veteran, all the time. I don’t have anyone who fought in the first World War..but these are the World War I draft registrations for my great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin, and great-great grandfather, Rudolph Stutzmann.
Websites I used in this research:
Ancestry.com
Fultonhistory.com