Do you feel like spending Memorial Day 2019 in the town where it began? Good luck with that. Twenty-five municipalities claim to be the holiday’s birthplace. It’s a murky field of study. Historians innocently blunder into the controversy the same way mastodons once wandered into the La Brea Tar Pits — and with similar results.

Let’s start with what we know for sure. Back in 1868, Gen. John “Black Jack” Logan was commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. It was an organization of Union Civil War veterans, much like today’s American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He urged that May 30 be observed as Decoration Day, a time to place flowers on the graves of Northern war dead. It’s believed the 30th was selected because flowers would be blooming all around the country then.