Posted on 01/05/2021 5:56:58 PM PST by Rebelbase
At just 17, Helen Viola Jackson married 93-year-old widower James Bolin, who she had been providing daily care for.
Helen Viola Jackson, the last known widow of a Civil War soldier, has died. She was 101.
Jackson's death was confirmed in a statement by the Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival, which revealed that she died on Dec. 16 at Webco Manor Nursing Home in Marshfield, Missouri, where she had been living for many years.
Though she kept details of her life mostly private, Jackson recently disclosed to her minister while working out the details of her funeral that she had married James Bolin, a 93-year-old Civil War veteran, when she was 17 years old, the statement read.
(Excerpt) Read more at people.com ...
I’m sure it was a love match.
Clearing the way for the first widow of CW2, I guess.
Did they have kids?
Irene Triplett died in 2020 as the last survivor to collect a Civil War pension (as a widow).
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. I loved that book so much I read it twice.
No.
John Tyler, president from 1841-45 still has a surviving Grandson. Tyler was kicked out of the whig party and later became a confederate.
Bkmk
I thought the last one had already died a while back.
Fascinating. Kind of stretches “within living memory” to the breaking point.
Great point!
Amazing. Only in America!
Helen Jackson kept the marriage secret until recently. Although her husband had married her to give her his pension, she didn’t apply for it because she didn’t want to alienate his children and become known in town as the girl who married a man four times her age for money.
I remember reading about her here years ago.
Different set of values back then.
We could use some of them now.
Surprised the honeymoon didn’t kill him.
The article says he was a Union soldier.
I met the daughters of a Civil War soldier back when I was doing research on the 55th Mass. I tracked down the man's grandson, and he informed me that his mother and aunt were still alive.
While doing research at Cornell where the manuscript collection of the unit's Assistant Surgeon was held, I came across letters from the soldier to the Doctor, written many years after the war had ended. The letters had been written by his oldest daughter, who was about 10 at the time, and he had enclosed a picture of her with one of the letters. Unbeknownst to me at the time I found them, that she was still alive. She was the mother of the grandson I had contacted.
The soldier, Andy Smith had been a slave in Kentucky, but ran away, and ended up with the 41st Illinois as a servant/cook, and was wounded at Shiloh. After he recovered, he headed to Boston because he heard they were organizing a black regiment there. He was too late to join the 54th Mass., so ended up in the 55th. After the war, he went home to Kentucky. He married, but the marriage produced no children, and his wife passed. He married again, and his wife was young, and delivered two little girls. She died in a kitchen fire, and although he tried to keep the girls, it was too difficult for an elderly man to care for a newborn, so the youngest, Caruth went to live with her mother's family. The oldest daughter was Geneva Susan. Susan was Andy's mother's name. She had also been a slave, and it is believed that the master, whose name was Smith, fathered Andy. Geneva died not long after I met her, but her younger sister Caruth, lived until she was 104, dying in 2012.
A book about Andy Smith was published this year. It was dedicated to me and another historian. In 1991, the family received the Medal of Honor posthumously for Andy Smith. Here's a link to a recent article. A picture of his daughter with her nephew with Bill Clinton in the Roosevelt Room at the White House is in the article:
Medal Of Honor Recipient Chronicled In Rise Of Black Middle Class
Here's a link to his youngest daughter's obit from 2012:
Boy, times have changed haven’t they? Today she could have abortions, genital mutilation, sex change operation, and marry a dog if she wanted to. Of course a dog doesn’t come with a pension.
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