Sculptor Martin Milmore's Citizen Soldier Unveiled in Roxbury at first National Memorial Day in May, 1868

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Citizen Soldier at Forest Hills Cemetery

Martin Milmore's Citizen Soldier bronze statue was unveiled at Forest Hills Cemetery on May 30, 1868, which was the first national commemoration of Memorial Day in the United States.  It was also known as the Standing Soldier, and Roxbury Soldier, and was a homage to the local foot soldiers who fought in the Civil War.

The Town of Roxbury commissioned the statue to the young, 24-year old sculptor after it "purchased a lot in the Forest Hills Cemetery upon recovering the bodies of 8 local soldiers from the Antietam Battlefield in 1862," according to a National Portrait Galley exhibit in 2006. 


Clay Model of Roxbury Soldier in Milmore's Studio on Tremont Street
Image Courtesy of Library of Congress


In February, 1868, just prior to the unveiling, the statue went on temporary display at Boston City Hall on School Street, across from the statue of Ben Franklin.   A notice in the Boston Evening Transcript, dated February 18, 1869, reported that "It deservedly attracts much attention from the throngs of people who are constantly passing through that thoroughfare."

"We have spoken heretofore of this fine work when in the clay model," wrote BET. "For attitude, expression, correctness of manipulation, as well as for fitness and feeling in conception, it impresses us as one of the best of American efforts of its kind, and every way creditable to the young artist who designed it. Those who examine it must remember its destination; and then the meaning of its thoughtful, serious, sad and yet earnest air of contemplation will be impressive.

Close up of Citizen Soldier

"The young soldier is in a reverie, such could only be his, over the graves of his comrades, who have met that fate which he feels may at any moment be the price he too must pay for his devotion to his country," wrote BET. "There is a lesson in the statue which ought to be learned by all who gaze upon it, even whilst they are admiring or criticizing its artistic merits. In its very silence it speaks, what many are too indifferent to hear. It tells the story of what it cost to preserve for us our Union, our justice, our freedom and our humanity."

Quote by Abraham Lincoln on the back of the Roxbury Soldier Memorial


Cast at Ames Works Foundry in Chicopee, MA,  the Citizen Soldier was Milmore's first Civil War statue, and its success led Milmore on a career building dozens of other Civil War memorials, many of them modeled after the Roxbury statue.   The Forrest Hill Cemetery later became part of Jamaica Plain.

Milmore's most acclaimed Civl War pieces include the Soldiers and Sailor's Monument on Boston Common, and the American Sphinx at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. 

Research, Photos & Text, Michael Quinlin




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