While many stories in the Bible have resonance for readers, the Book of Job held extra meaning for Civil War Veterans living at the Central Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) in Dayton, Ohio. The 1861 edition of the Dayton Bible that was used in countless services at the chapel displays telltale color changes to certain pages due to light exposure and cracking along one part of the binding. These blemishes suggest that it was frequently opened to the chapters relating Job’s story. The sermons given by Reverend William B. Earnshaw about Job, a righteous man tested beyond measure, must have provided relief and comfort to the ex-soldiers who had witnessed and endured the horrors of battle.
The Dayton Bible highlights the important role that religious faith and chaplains played in the lives of the National Home residents as well as later generations of Veterans. When the NHDVS system was established in 1867, chaplains like Earnshaw were provided housing on the different National Home campuses and paid a salary of $1,500 per year plus forage for one horse. Religious services were held for both Protestant and Catholic Veterans and large weekly attendance numbers resulted in “much good, and largely contributed to the moral improvement of the mend and the peace and good order of the establishment.”
As the network of Soldiers Homes and later Veterans hospitals expanded across the nation in the early 1900s, ministry became a largely part-time affair performed by civilian clergy from the surrounding community. World War II changed everything, as sixteen million Veterans returned home, many needing medical assistance from the Veterans Administration. VA established a Chaplain Service in 1945 in the Department of Medicine and Surgery and named Reverend Crawford W. Brown, a former Army chaplain, as its first director. In the post-World War Two period, as the service was formalized, it added chaplains of different faiths and became an integral part of the care Veterans received at VA facilities. Chaplains made rounds, providing counseling and comfort to patients. They also led services in hospital chapels.
In 1964, the Veterans Administration Chaplain School was established at the Jefferson Barracks VA Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, to better equip and train chaplains to meet the specific needs of Veterans. Today, there are over 800 full- and part-time chaplains representing a spectrum of religious faiths and traditions. Furthermore, every VA hospital contains a chapel for reflection and services. While the program has grown and evolved from the earliest days of Reverend Earnshaw’s ministry, the mission remains largely the same as it was in the 1870s: “To assure Veterans and their families the best possible spiritual guidance, religious services, and care.”
Reflecting its significance, the Dayton Bible was selected as the first object to be officially placed into the collection of the National VA History Center in 2021. The chapel where Reverend Earnshaw once preached from that copy of the Bible about the trials of Job still serves as a house of worship for Veterans and their families of the Protestant religion.
By Katie Rories
Historian, Veterans Health Administration
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History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 86: The Roll of Honor
“The following pages are devoted to the memory of those heroes who have given up their lives upon the altar of their country, in defense of the American Union.”
So opened the preface to the first volume of the Roll of Honor, a compendium of over 300,000 Federal soldiers who died during the Civil War and were interred in national and other cemeteries. The genesis of this 27-volume collection published between 1865 and 1871 can be traced to Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the department he oversaw for a remarkable 21 years from 1861 to 1882.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 85: Congressman Claypool’s “$1 Per Day Pension” Ribbon
Founded in 1866 as fraternal organization for Union Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) embraced a new mission in the 1880s: political activism. The GAR formed a pension committee in 1881 for the express purpose of lobbying Congress for more generous pension benefits.
An artifact from the political wrangling over pensions is now part of the permanent collection of the National VA History Center in Dayton, Ohio. The item is a small pension ribbon displaying the message: “I endorse the $1 per day pension as recommended by the Departments of Ohio and Indiana G.A.R.” The button attached to the ribbon features two American flags and the phrase “saved by the boys of ’61-65.” The back of the ribbon bears the signature of Horatio C. Claypool, a Democratic judge who ran for the seat in Ohio’s eleventh Congressional district in the 1910 mid-term elections.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 84: Gettysburg Address Tablet
President Abraham Lincoln is one of the most revered figures in American history. Rankings of U.S. presidents routinely place him at or near the top of the list. Lincoln is also held in high esteem at VA. His stirring call during his second inaugural address in 1865 to “care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan” embodies the nation’s promise to all who wear the uniform, a promise VA and its predecessor administrations have kept ever since the Civil War.
Ever since Lincoln first uttered those memorable words in November 1863, the Gettysburg Address has been linked to our national cemeteries. In 1908, Congress approved a plan to produce a standard Gettysburg Address tablet to be installed in all national cemeteries in time for the centennial of President Lincoln’s birth on February 12, 1909.
