Then and Now: Grand Army of the Republic 1889 Grand Encampment
May 31-The Grand Army of the Republic, the fraternal organization for soldiers of the Civil War, was formed in 1866. Thousands of GAR members moved to the Pacific Northwest as the U.S. population spread to Western states.
The group organized into state units, called departments. The department of Washington scheduled its seventh annual "grand encampment" in Spokane on April 25 -26, 1889. The state commander was J.W. Sprague, a Civil War general who was now a Northern Pacific Railroad superintendent. City founder James Glover named Sprague Avenue after the officer.
Knowing that visitors from Seattle and elsewhere would travel for hours for meetings, a campfire gathering and an elegant ball, local organizers set to work. The Spokane newspaper said there were 1,404 GAR members statewide, divided into 54 posts.
Organizers planned to hold the group's business meetings at the Pacific Hotel, one of the few brick buildings in town. GAR organizers worked out favorable train fares for each leg of the trips to Spokane. The national commander, William Warner of Kansas City, Missouri, would attend with some of his staff. Smaller organizing tasks were spread among officers of several different posts.
A founding member of the Spokane GAR post was Civil War veteran Daniel K. Oliver, who was born in 1845 and served in the Union Army in Pennsylvania. After leaving the Army, he drove a six-oxen wagon to California, then lived in Nevada and Oregon. He married and moved to Spokane in 1878. He joined the firm of Wiscombe, Johnson and Oliver to operate the city's first planing mill. He built his own house at 403 East Fourth Ave. and built his own business block at Riverside Avenue and Washington Street after the great fire, which happened a few months after the Grand Encampment of 1889. His wife Amanda was a member of the Women's Relief Corps, the women's auxiliary of the GAR.
Daniel Oliver died in 1906 at age 61. Amanda Oliver died in 1941 at age 83.
GAR became an influential political lobby after the war and advocated for veterans benefits and pensions. The group dissolved in 1956 after the death of the last living member.
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