Throwback Thursday – WWI parade

[Photographs from the private collection of the author. Click on image to see the full view.]

When the soldiers returned home after World War I, many small towns honored their fallen sons and returning soldiers with parades. This series of photographs found their way to me via my maternal grandmother’s family and I believe the location is Avon Square (Avon, Massachusetts) in the spring of 1919. My family lived for many generations in the area of Massachusetts where Holbrook, Avon, and Brockton come together. My great grandfather, Malcolm W. Leonard, served in Company A, 23rd Engineers. In his late twenties when he enlisted, Malcolm was a college graduate and civil engineer before joining the Army. (If you have been following along, he was the boy in the boat in yesterday’s post. The two girls were his sisters, Sibyl and Eunice.)