The American Civil War ended in 1865. That’s 155 years ago, ancient history one might say. And yet the last few widows of Civil War veterans only died a few years ago. In fact the last child of a Civil War veteran died only in June 2020. Her name was Irene Triplett and she was the daughter of a father who fought in the Union Army from 1863 until 1865.
There were several other such men and women, until a few years back. Irene was the last one alive. She died at the age of 90, in 2020. She had been born in 1930. Her father, Moses Triplett, was born in 1846, making him 84 at the time of Irene’s birth — he had married her mother a year prior. I remember being amazed as a kid by meeting with my great-grandfather, born in 1899. This is a whole other level!
Irene had a brother, too, who died long before her. And half-siblings on her father’s side who, too, died far before her. It’s amazing that until very recently, there were a few old people alive who were the children of Confederate and Union soldiers. Could you imagine, watching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and thinking to yourself as you see the Union soldiers marching around: “That could have been my daddy!”
In August 2008, Maudie Hopkins died. Born in 1914, she was the last widow of a Confederate or Union soldier at the time of her passing. See in the 1920s and 1930s, most veterans of the American Civil War were long dead and buried. But some were still alive and kicking, many of them had enlisted as teenagers or young adults. Now in their eighties and nineties, they still received their Civil War pension from the government.
It was the time of the Great Depression. People were dirt poor, starving. People did anything to stay alive. Few things were as stable as a civil war pension, and the elderly men who still received it, most of them widowers, were oddly ‘in demand’ as husband material. Why? Not only did the men get their pension, but after their passing, their widows would also get a pension, being the widow of a Civil War Veteran. Doesn’t matter if the marriage only lasted a few years. Or only a month. They’d be “set” for life, and while the pension wasn’t enormous, it was a major help in those days.
That’s why when Maudie Hopkins died, in 2008, she was still receiving a Civil War veteran’s widow allowance. There were quite a few such women still alive and breathing until about a decade ago. And as some of the old veterans still managed to impregnate their much younger spouses, there were a few children around as well until just a few months ago.
And this blows my mind. That until June this year, you could go to a nursing home in America, and talk to an old lady who still had memories of an elderly father who was a contempary of Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln.
Picture Source Wikipedia
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