Boalsburg is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Harris Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 3,722 at the 2010 census. The village claims to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. However, that claim was brought into Ask by Bellware and Gardiner in their book, The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday in America, in 2014. In their book, Bellware and Gardiner narrowing out that the Boalsburg story was first published in 1904, forty years after the fact with no indication that General Logan drew inspiration from any undertakings in Boalsburg and no evidence that it started the holiday.

The name “Boalsburg” comes from the Boal relatives who established the region after emigrating from County Londonderry, Ireland. The fourth generation of the Boal family, Col. Theodore Davis Boal, married Mathilde de Lagarde whose mother’s sister Victoria married Diego Santiago Colón, a descendant of Christopher Columbus. Mathilde familial a part of her aunt Victoria’s estate in 1908 and brought the Columbus Chapel to the Boal Mansion from Spain in 1919 This inheritance included an admiral’s desk that relations tradition says belonged to Columbus himself. The Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum are open to the public. Boalsburg originally was on the main road for travelers from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, with the David Boal tavern that housed travelers yet standing today. Boalsburg is house to the Pennsylvania Military Museum, as competently as the headquarters of the Civil War reenacting unit, 3rd Pennsylvania Light Artillery Battery B.

The Boalsburg Historic District and Hill House were supplementary to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. The Boal Mansion was extra the behind year.

The town has a promote square design known as ‘the Diamond’, a common design feature of towns in the northern province of Ulster in Ireland, the style of which was imported by emigrants from Ulster to Pennsylvania.