John B. Murray (August 13, 1822 – October 8, 1884) was an attorney and United States Volunteers brevet brigadier general of the American Civil War.

President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Waterloo the birthplace of the holiday following the passage of House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 587 in 1966.

In 2014, almost fifty years after the proclamation, Bellware and Gardiner published The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America and call into question the veracity of that claim.

This evidence includes an earlier report from 1875 in a New York newspaper that describes, in detail, Waterloo’s first Memorial Day and places it in 1868 as well as other inconsistencies between the historical record and the story compiled by the Centennial Committee.

[7] Bellware and Gardiner credit Mary Ann Williams and the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia as the true originators of the holiday as abundant contemporaneous evidence from across the nation exists to substantiate the claim.

In 2016, VFW Magazine featured an article by Doris Wolf in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Waterloo's Memorial Day observance.