When the large Confederate Hospital was established at Poplar Lawn in Petersburg, she served as linen matron until the end of the war.
[4] While visiting the cemetery, the wife of Union General John A. Logan, observed Davidson and the students putting flowers and tiny Confederate flags on the graves of soldiers.
Upon hearing her story, General Logan, now the first Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), replied to her that he would work establish this custom of honoring fallen soldiers across the country.
They point out that General Logan was aware of the southern observances of Memorial Day prior to his wife’s trip to Virginia in 1868 and even mentioned those observances in a speech in 1866 [6] 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 fact, a copy of Mrs. Williams' famous letter urging the ladies of the South to annually decorate the soldiers' graves appeared in a Richmond newspaper more than two months before Miss Nora and her school children acted on the request.