A couple of weeks ago, Mark Tennant and I went out to Jollytown to see how the Jesse Taylor monument was holding up. As some of you may remember, WVRA members and the Sons of Union Veterans teamed up to clean up site and paint the cannon and mortars at the monument. We were quite gratified to see that the paint job we did in 2010 was still holding up well and, other than a little road dirt from passing traffic, still looks pretty good. Evidently, Matt Gillespie got some pretty good paint to do the job!
We will hopefully be able to continue to keep an eye on this site and provide some care. This is a pretty unusual and impressive monument to be in such a remote area and there does not seem to be anyone else doing actual maintenance on it, although, someone is replacing the American flags on at least a yearly basis. According to Gary Wise, our contact in the area, there was a committee of sorts who maintained the site in the past, but all of those folks have evidently gotten too old to keep it up or have passed on.
Projects such as this help keep the memory of Jesse Taylor and the other soldiers of that great conflict alive. Hopefully, we can find someone to pass this on to when we are too old to keep it up.
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