File:Veterans' Monument at Memorial Park, Hamburg, New York - 20210819.jpg

English: A view of Veterans' Monument at Memorial Park in Hamburg, New York, as seen in August 2021. A tall bronze statue depicting Lady Liberty holding a furled flag and standing over a kneeling soldier with rifle in hand, the monument, "erected by N.J. Swift Woman's Relief Corps No. 32, auxiliary to N.J. Swift Post No. 440, Hamburg, N.Y." according to the engraving on its granite pedestal, was unveiled in 1914 and over the years has been rededicated twice: once in 1920 by the same relief corps to additionally honor "World War [I] veterans who made the supreme sacrifice", and again on August 30, 1998 "to all men and women who honorably served in military service of the United States". Interestingly, when the statue was being dismantled for repair in connection with its second rededication, a forgotten time capsule was found dating from the statue's original unveiling in 1914 which contained, according to a Buffalo News article about the find, "several yellowed but legible local newspapers detailing the latest [World War I] stories and death tolls, a Hamburg High School handbook, rosters of a volunteer local infantry, a medal and membership list of the Women's Relief Corp... lists of Hamburg Fire Department members, Masonic registers, a roster of the 116th Regiment of the New York Volunteer Infantry detailed by rank in 1906, information about the Beulah chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star and a list of area churches and their ministers", and atop the tarnished copper box, "an 1888 medal worn by the president of the Women's Relief Corps". The site of Memorial Park itself was originally Hamburg's village cemetery, opened to burials in 1811 and used for that purpose until 1878, when bodies began to be moved to nearby Prospect Lawn to allow for the site's reuse as a park.