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I seem to recall reading in the paper (about a year ago) about a woman who had just died who had still been receiving benefits for being a Civil War widow. In case this sounds strange, I believe it must have happened something like this: A youth of about 15 or 16 joins the army in 1865, which would put his birth around 1850. Around 1920 or so (when he’s around 70 years old) he marries a girl 50 years his junior (putting her birth ~1900). Strange, yes, but not impossible, especially considering different social customs at the time. She lives to be 104 years old, and dies in the 21st Century.
I’m wondering if anyone else had heard about this interesting story, which is really quite fascinating.
I heard about it. I think it was only a year or two ago. Didnt the last southern widow die just a couple of years before her?
I seem to recall another story of someone associated with the Civil War dying within my lifetime. I believe that the last actual Civil War veteran died in the 1950s (1956 is the year, I think). Pretty amazing when you think of it. Again, he was probably around 15 or so when he fought in the war (perhaps in the last year of it), which would make him around 100 by the time he dies. Could you imagine fighting in the Civil War and then surviving 80 years to hear about the atomic bomb being used in a war?
I think he is in the guinness book of records. He was a confederate. I believe he was 13 at the time he fought. And I might be wrong I havent read the entry in a while but I think he died in 63. If I am remembering right then he may have seen lincoln and kennedys assassanation. But check the book I am not sure about those dates.
Wow, this is amazing.? While looking up this information, I came across this site, which gives the names of last surviving vets from different wars.? I find it simply amazing that the last widow of a Revolutionary War vet died in 1906.Looks like John Salling was the last Confederate to die in 1958.? However, there's some question as to whether or not he was an imposter.
The last surviving union general, Adelbert Ames died in 1933 at the age of 97. He also was a participant in the shoot out with the James gand in the Northfield Minnisota raid.
Here's what I found out -Last Union veteran, Albert Woolson, died 8/2/56, age 109 Last Confederate veteran, John Salling, died 3/16/58, age 112
Heres some more (from historytoday.com):
The last known widow of a veteran from the American Civil War has died in Alabama at the age of 97. Alberta Martin died on Memorial Day 2004 at a nursing home of heart failure. The daughter of a sharecropper and already a widow aged 21, in 1927 she married William Martin who was then 60 years her senior and had been a private in the Confederate army. … The Alabama government decided she was eligible for a Confederate widow?s pension of $2,500 a month; years earlier the state has abandoned the programme believing there were no surviving widows. Her carer, Dr Kenneth Chancery, stated: “She was what we call the last link to Dixie. The war hasn't been that far removed, particularly for southerners, and she reminded us of that.? …
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What's interesting about that is an historian had to come to her rescue to get her pension back. I wonder if she just didn't argue one the benefits were cut. Also, it seems that there may even be some widow alive today that the history books have overlooked. If history lost track of Civil War widows once, it could do so again.
The thread on the last of the WWI vets got me looking around, and I saw this:
The person thought to be the last-known Confederate widow, Alberta Martin, was born Dec, 4, 1906, and died at age 97 in Alabama on May 31, 2004. In 1927, at age 21, she married William Jasper Martin, then 81. Martin joined the Confederate army in May 1864. Upon her husband's death, she married his grandson from his first marriage. The publicity surrounding Alberta Martin's death prompted relatives of Maudie Celia Hopkins of Arkansas to reveal that the 89-year-old was in fact the last civil war widow. Hopkins married 86-year-old William Cantrell on Feb. 2, 1934, when she was 19. She did so to escape poverty, but kept quiet about the unusual marriage, ?I thought people would gossip about it.? Cantrell, who served in the Virginia Infantry, supported her with his Confederate pension of ?$25 every two or three months? until his death in 1937. Hopkins has outlived three other husbands.
Now, according to this (looks like it may have been written in 2007), is Maudie Celia Hopkins the last of the Civil War vet widows? Is she possibly still alive? Whatever the case, it's always crazy to think of these types of things….fascinating stuff.
Could you imagine fighting in the Civil War and then surviving 80 years to hear about the atomic bomb being used in a war?
In High School I date a girl whose grandmother (who lived with her family) was born the year the Transcontinental Railroad was completed and died the year after man landed on the moon.
