Free Republic

Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension Dies at 90The Department of Veterans Affairs' motto is "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan." The meaning of those words was perhaps never more apparent than in the case of Irene Triplett, who died Tuesday from surgical complications following a fall at a North Carolina nursing home, according to The Wall Street Journal. She was the last person to receive a pension from a veteran's Civil War service. Her father, Mose Triplett, fought on both sides of the Civil War, first...

WILKESBORO, N.C. — Each month, Wilkesboro’s Irene Triplett collects $73.13 from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a pension payment for her father’s military service — in the Civil War. Triplett, 84, is the last living person collecting a pension payment for service in the Civil War. Pvt. Mose Triplett was born in 1846 and lived to the age of 92. After his first wife’s death, he married Elida Hall, nearly 50 years his junior, in 1924. In 1930, Irene Triplett was born when her father was 84 and her mother was 34.