At 97, last known Civil War widow is living link to history

Associated Press ^ | 4/12/03 | PHILLIP RAWLS

[Jaysun]

ENTERPRISE, Ala. - America's last known Civil War widow never had a hoop skirt or a mansion like Tara.

Alberta Martin was a sharecropper's daughter with a young baby and no job when, in 1927, she married a man 60 years her senior. Yes, former Confederate soldier William Jasper Martin was old, but his $50-a.m.onth pension as a Civil War veteran ensured there would be food on the table and - many years later - fame.

"Miz Alberta," as everyone calls her, is 97 now and in a wheelchair. But Civil War re-enactors and history buffs take her to Sons of Confederate Veterans events from Gettysburg to St. Louis. They see that she has regular visitors at a nursing home in Enterprise and make sure that, after a lifetime in poverty, she can be comfortable in her final days as a living link to history.

Her role became even more significant when Gertrude Janeway, the last widow of a Union veteran, died in January in Tennessee at age 93.

Martin's eldest son appreciates the late-in-life recognition and comfort that has come to his mother.

"She lived a rough, rough life back in the '20s and '30s. They sharecropped and had a miserable life," said Harold Farrow, 78, of North Little Rock, Ark.

His mother was a seventh-grade dropout working in an Alabama textile mill when she met a cab driver named Howard Farrow. They stood before a preacher to get married, but never got a marriage license to make it official.

It didn't matter. Howard Farrow liked his whiskey, she recalled, and he died in a traffic accident six months after Harold was born.

Alone and living with her father, she began to notice "the old man" who walked by her house on his way to play dominoes with friends. William Jasper Martin was nearly 82 and she was barely 21. Their courting consisted of a few conversations.

"He asked my daddy if he could let him have me. My daddy told him that he didn't care if I didn't," she recalled.

On Dec. 10, 1927, Alberta and W.J. Martin were married in a ceremony at the courthouse in Andalusia in south Alabama. She wore "just a plain blue cotton dress."

Theirs was never a typical or an easy marriage.

Their wedding night was spent in her half-brother's crowded house with lots of other family. "When we went to bed, we had the baby in between us and he went to crying," she said.

Two days later, they rented their first house, starting with a stove and a table as the only furnishings.

Even in those days, people wanted to know why a young woman would marry such an old man?

Martin, who had a sense of humor when she had nothing else, usually gave a comical answer: "It's better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave."

But for a woman as poor as Martin, the real answer was simpler: "He had $50 a month."

"Sometimes I would look out over the fields and wonder what it was like to be married to a younger man," she recalled.

For her husband, the marriage brought late-in-life joy. On Oct. 10, 1928, their son, Willie, was born, and the old man loved to go to town and carry the boy on his shoulders, proudly displaying his offspring.

They had been married nearly five years when the Civil War veteran died in 1932.

Two months later, his widow married his grandson by a previous marriage.

The marriage of Alberta and Charlie Martin caused the gossip to fly. They got kicked out of their church. People gave them funny looks.

Alberta Martin made no excuses.

"I was lonesome," she said.

They were eventually welcomed back by the church, and their marriage worked, with the couple marking their 50th anniversary before Charlie died in 1983.

Afterward, Martin lived with her son Willie, making do off her third husband's pension as a World War II veteran.

She told people she was a Civil War widow and she ought to be getting the Civil War widow's pension that Alabama still had on its law books from 1895. Her daughter-in-law even wrote then-Gov. George Wallace to explain her situation.

But when you're a poor widow with little education, it's hard to get anybody's attention in the state capital.

In 1996, Enterprise dentist Ken Chancey and other members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans took up her cause. They got state officials to approve her for a pension.

They even bought the first air conditioner for a woman who had lived her entire life in the sweltering summers of south Alabama.

These days, they bring her sacks of her favorite snack - Cheetos - and relish her recounting of the stories that W.J. Martin told her about the Civil War, about how food was in such short supply near the end of the war that he would grab whatever he could find in roadside gardens while on the march.

"He'd get a handful of peas or a watermelon or whatever he could and eat it," she said.

At 96, Martin's hearing is going and some days so is her memory.

But when her memory won't work like she wants, she can still find her sense of humor and a smile: "I'm old enough to forget, ain't I?"

One thing that's not left to Martin's fading memory is her funeral. It's already planned in great detail.

It will be a Confederate heritage ceremony, complete with Civil War re-enactors and a Confederate brass ensemble. A mule-drawn wagon will carry her casket to a cemetery near Elba where her last husband is buried, and a Confederate battle flag will cover her casket.

While others debate the appropriateness of the Confederate battle flag, Martin talks proudly of her burial plans.

"It's my flag," she says.

[EllaMinnow]

I recently had dinner with a cousin of my father who remembers the Civil War stories he heard directly from his grandfather/my great-grandfather who was in the Union Cavalry from Chancellorsville to the end.
It was unbelievable to me, talking to someone who had talked to my favorite dead ancestor, and remembered him clearly.

[Corin Stormhands]

I have a copy of my great-great grandmothers "Confederate widow's benefit" She got $25 a month. She died in the late 1800s. But then she was alive during the War.

The history is fascinating.

[Just mythoughts]

Old men marrying "young" women must have been fairly common back then. My great-grandfather was born in 1814, in KY., left after "bushwackers" massacred a son and daughter.

His apparently he received a Civil War Pension, his first wife died and he married again late in life and had three more children around age of 70 +.

[Just mythoughts]

Sorry for the incoherent sentence/ not doing too well being on phone and typing.... Should read

He apparently received a Civil War Pension ...

[LTCJ]

This is Mrs. Martin standing in front of Fort Stedman which was attacked by 300 Confederates carrying only hatchets on the early morning of March 25, 1865. After these volunteers hacked up the siege works with the axes and hatchets, they had to use these to fight the Union soldiers in the Fort as these volunteers had no weapons except the axes and hatchets. Other Confederates followed these volunteers into the Fort and they had guns and muskets. The Confederates over ran the Union soldiers but the Union soldiers counterattacked later that day and drove the Confederates away. Mrs. Martin was sitting by her son Willie when this picture was taken. Willie's father, Private William Jasper Martin, was present during a great part of the Petersburg siege. Mrs. Martin made a remark to the Press who interviewed her at this spot. She said, "I'm glad that Willie got to come up here and finally see where his Daddy fought".

I'll be ... My G-G-Grandfather fought in this action. After participating in taking Ft Stedman he and his command were cut off and finally overwhelmed. He went through the entire war, rising from Forth Corporal to Captain, and spent the last few months of the war as a POW.

Another great-grandfather was a private, wounded at Second Manassas. I've been able to track down the location were he fell to within a few hundred feet.

History is not dead as long as there are those who will remember.

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting posts.

[Donaeus]

Check out this bit of history!!

[breakem]

In the 50s there was a show called the True Story sponsored by Pall Mall cigarettes. On one episode, they had an old timer claiming to be Jesse James. I have posted this before, but no one else on FR has seen it, as far as I know. I guess the dna tests proved this guy wrong awhile back. Showed the body in Jesse's grave was actually Jesse. Who woulda thunk it?

[nmh]

It's no picnic getting old. My dear Grandmother who turned 100 in June of 2003 just died Wednesday night. She too survived the depression etc.. Her health was failing and now she is in heaven with her husband and other loved ones. I'll miss her.

[Axenolith]

My 93 year old Grandfather has been sucking welding fumes, asbestos, smoker (quit), chew tobacco (still occasional), 3 eggs 4 or 5 days a week + lots of meat, 3 fingers of Wild Turkey in the evening, and he still is kicking butt and taking names.

The 87 year old one did 32 years military (Navy and Marines) and came out of a POW camp at 86 pounds and still gets in a round of golf occasionally.

Please God... let me have a good dose of those genes!!!

[Axenolith]

My Great Great Grandfather was born in 1862, and we have a family picture of him holding me along with my mom, grandfather and great grandfather. He passed away when I was ~2.5 in 1967. All of my grandparents are still living, My sister has had kids (my little nephews) so they have a whole side of great grandparents.

It's weird and cool to know and talk to people who remember when horses were the majority on the road and who knew at one point in their lives that the thought of man ever going to the moon was a load of crap fit for trashy comics!

[risk]

We've got a treasure of old people in this country!

[Lucy Lake]

A couple of years ago I asked my 96 year old uncle what he thought was the most important invention or advancement during his lifetime. He thought for a minute and said, "Good roads."

I was surprised as I thought he would say the invention of penicillin, or the moon landing, or air conditioning.

He spoke at length about his grandfather, my gr-grandfather, who fought in the Civil War, as my uncle was about 15 when my gr-grandfather died. My gr-grandmother died in the 1918 flu epidemic and gr-grandfather went to live with his son, my grandfather, so my uncle knew his grandfather fairly well.

A man living in Virginia was renovating an old house and discovered a leather knapsack containing letters my gr-grandfather wrote during the Civil War, but had never gotten the chance to mail them. Apparently gr-grandfather hid the knapsack with the intention of retrieving it, but he never did. He was wounded, and that may have been the reason he couldn't.

The letters were preserved in the knapsack, and the man in Virginia spent several years searching for our family for whom the letters were intended. He finally found my uncle, the great grandson, and was kind enough to return the letters to our family.

[risk]

bump - maybe you could work with SAMWolf or LindaSOG to get some of that raw civil war material online in a Canteen thread.

[Jaysun]

Sorry for your loss. I have three close relatives over 100 at the moment. I'm fortunate to have them and speak to them as often as possible. It's amazing when you think about all of the changes that they've seen over their lifetimes. My Great-Grandfather decided to start playing piano at 98. He took lessons. He lives alone, but he drives himself to a local nursing home to entertain the "old folks" once a week. Amazing.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks Risk.

Grizzfan, if you're interested Fr-mail me or Snippy_about _it and we'll see what we can do.

[Lazamataz]

At 97, last known Civil War widow is living link to history

That should make her about negative 43 years old when she married.

[Crawdad]

I believe she used to live in Elba, AL, my home town.

[BJungNan]

World's Oldest Person Dies, As Do Oldest Men, American

Nov. 2, 3003 - October was a bad month for old-age record holders. The oldest living woman, oldest man and oldest American all died.

> Kamato Hongo, recognized as the world's oldest person by the Guinness Book of Records, died of pneumonia on Oct. 31 in her native Japan at 116. She had held the title since March, 2002, after the death of 115-year-old American Maude Farris-Luse.

> At the end of September, Yukichi Chuganji, the world's oldest man, according to Guinness, died at 114 in southern Japan. But in mid-October a man named Sek Yi, died in Cambodia. His family said he was 122 years old but his birth date is not documented.

Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Mitoyo Kawate of Hiroshima -- 114 years old – is now the oldest person in Japan, but there has not been an official announcement by Guinness.

> Elena Slough, documented as the oldest person in the U.S., died Oct. 5 at the nursing home where her daughter died three days earlier. She was 114 or 115, according to different sources. The Gerontology Research Group said Slough was born on July 8, 1889, making her 114 years old at the time of her death. What is not in dispute is that Slough had been the oldest person in the United States since April, when 113-year-old Mary Dorothy Christian died in San Pablo, Calif..

The oldest fully authenticated age to which any human has lived is the 122 years and 164 days of Frenchwoman Jeanne-Louise Calment, who died in 1997.

[nmh]

Cherish them. Spoil them silly and SHOW your love for them. Hug them. Kiss them. Stroke their hand or arm. tell them how much you love them. Hopefully they are Christians ... tell them heaven is a wonderful place and to meet you when it's your turn to leave. When their day does come and hopefully they go to heaven ... wouldn't it be wonderful when it's your turn if they are there to greet you?