Posted on 05/31/2004 1:03:21 PM PDT by WinOne4TheGipper
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died on Memorial Day, ending an unlikely ascent from sharecropper's daughter to the belle of 21st century Confederate history buffs who paraded her across the South. She was 97.
Martin died at a nursing home in Enterprise of complications from a heart attack she suffered May 7, said her caretaker, Dr. Kenneth Chancey. She died nearly 140 years after the Civil War ended.
Her May-December marriage in the 1920s to Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin and her longevity made her a celebrated final link to the old Confederacy.
After living in obscurity and poverty for most of her life, in her final years the Sons of Confederate Veterans (news - web sites) took her to conventions and rallies, often with a small Confederate battle flag waving in her hand and her clothes the colors of the rebel banner.
"I don't see nothing wrong with the flag flying," she said frequently.
Chancey said she loved the attention. "It's like being matriarch of a large family," he said.
"She was a link to the past," Chancey said Monday. "People would get emotional, holding her hand, crying and thinking about their family that suffered greatly in the past."
Wayne Flynt, a Southern history expert at Auburn University, said the historical distinctiveness of the South, which is so tied to the Civil War, has been disappearing, but Martin provided people with one last chance to see that history in real life.
"She became a symbol like the Confederate battle flag," he said.
The last widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, Gertrude Janeway, died in January 2003 at her home in Tennessee. She was 93 and had married veteran John Janeway when she was 18.
In 1997, Martin and Daisy Anderson, whose husband was a slave who ran away and joined the Union Army, were recognized at a ceremony at Gettysburg, Pa. Anderson, who lived in Denver, died in 1998 at age 97. Janeway wasn't invited to the Gettysburg event because, at the time, no one outside her family knew her whereabouts.
Alberta Stewart Martin was not from the "Gone With the Wind" South of white-columned mansions and hoop skirts. She was born Alberta Stewart to sharecroppers on Dec. 4, 1906, in Danley's Crossroads, a tiny settlement built around a sawmill 70 miles south of Montgomery.
Her mother died when she was 11. At 18, she met a cab driver named Howard Farrow, and they had a son before Farrow died in a car accident in 1926.
Stewart, her father and her son moved to Opp. Just up the road lived William Jasper Martin, a widower born in Georgia in 1845 who had a $50-a-month Confederate veteran's pension.
The 81-year-old man struck up a few conversations with the 21-year-old neighbor and a marriage of convenience was born.
"I had this little boy and I needed some help to raise him," Alberta Martin recalled in a 1998 interview.
They were married on Dec. 10, 1927, and 10 months later had a son, William.
She said her husband never talked much about the war, except the harsh times at Petersburg, Va.
"He'd say it was rough, how the trenches were full of water. They were so hungry in Virginia that during the time they were fighting, they had to grab food as they went along. They came across a potato patch and made up some mashed potatoes," she said.
Asked if she loved her husband, Martin said: "That's a hard question to answer. I cared enough about him to live with him. You know the difference between a young man and an old man."
William Jasper Martin died on July 8, 1931. Two months later, Alberta Martin married her late husband's grandson, Charlie Martin. He died in 1983.
She became the focus of a dustup over the depiction of her and her late Confederate husband in the 1998 book "Confederates in the Attic." Among other things, the book by Tony Horwitz described William Jasper Martin as a deserter.
A group that defends Southern heritage disagreed, contending there were at least two William Martins who served in Company K of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment and that Horwitz got the wrong one. Horwitz said his research was carefully checked and the book was accurate.
The state government considered Martin's record clean enough to award him a Confederate pension in 1921 and to give Alberta Martin Confederate widow's benefits in 1996.
Martin's older son, Harold Farrow of North Little Rock, Ark., died last June. Her younger son, Willie Martin, lives in Elba.
Alberta Martin is to be interred at New Ebenezer Baptist Church six miles west of Elba, in an 1860s-style ceremony following her funeral June 12.
I loved the South Park episode where Cartman gets the south to march to Washington and form a new CSA. It is hilarious....and Clinton just caves in...lol.
Well, the south has only become staunchly Republican within the last decade or so I think.
Reconstruction was still pretty darn hard on the South....grudges lasted awhile due to the treatment even then.
I think all of this plays a role, but I think the root lies in social cleavages (see post 60).
No, it isn't. It's entertaining, but it subtly tries to portray nineteenth century people with twentieth century psychological problems. Read it and you'll see what I mean.
Destro, it is my opinion that the South
is saving the Union from the democrats.
wardaddy wrote and asked: "We respect healthy eccentricity down here. It's my life's goal. How am I doing?"
LOL! Mighty fine, IMO.
As for me, I am fixing to become
a Southern Belle deluxe, along the lines
of dck2. :)
bourbon and WKB, you two are true Southern Gentlemen,
and you are too wardaddy.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
bourbon and WKB, you two are true Southern Gentlemen,
and you are too wardaddy.
I'm not real sure about Bourbon yet.
He's a might young to be a Real SG
maybe in few years after a few more chilun
Well, which is it? A shotgun wedding, or a son born a comfortable ten months after the wedding?
What was the rush to get her the widow's benefits? (1996! I wonder if that really is the pension award date?)
I guess it boils down to the fact that many White Southerners did not feel loyalty to or like the Slave owning landed class much and were not about to fight a guerilla war to restore back a rich man's ex-slave or plantation. They were willing to fight for States Rights and after the war and Reconstruction they got just that so the animosity to the Union died down and the thirst of the next Southern generation to revenge the loss went with it. It does seem to make sense that "terrorist" groups in the South were formed during Reconstruction and were repudiated and died down as Reconstruction was lifted. That sound about right?
I got a copy and at first it was interesting but the author began not-so-subtly interweaving his own weird fantasies and beliefs into the story halfway through.
It was just too bizarre, agenda-driven, and sleazy for me to finish.
Since Nixon and his Southern strategy.
Interesting thoughts......may be right there.
"We respect healthy eccentricity down here. It's my life's goal. How am I doing?"
I'd say you are well on your way to success. A little "healthy eccentricity" is probably the singular thing that keeps the South interesting, and sets us apart from the rest of the country. True, other parts of the country have their eccentrics, but none so grand as ours. With us, it's a way of life, and we're proud of our eccentrics. I strive for it, myself.
"As for me, I am fixing to become
a Southern Belle deluxe, along the lines
of dck2. :)"
Well, I'll swan, onyx. That's one of the nicest
compliments ever paid to me. Thank you so much. ;o)
And, onyx, I agree with you...WKB, wardaddy, and
bourbon are all Southern Gentlemen in the truest
sense.
Yes ...that is about right.
Also most Southern military leadership led by Robert E Lee urged surrender and no taking the war to guerrila levels. there were a few that desired continuing but it never gained any footing.
Reconstruction did indeed produce actions whose merits are debated to this day...LOL..boy howdy are they, but after the Union occupation ended and rights were restored to white Southerners...that ended too at least as a quasi-insurgency movement.
Birth of a Nation days was actually more of a midwest rather than southern movement.
Well ah declah.
Y'all mus' be one o' dem wisecrackin' Yankees.
My great-great grandfather fought in the civil war and had a testicle shot off. He still had one good one left and managed to father four children after the war.
I liked this novel. It met my literary standards. I also felt that I was getting, secondhand, someone's real reminiscences. I still quote from the widow: "Never throw anything away" (about the present-day value of Confederate currency). She also remarks on how good-looking the Confederate soldiers invariably were in those photographs you see. But also notes that one out of every two couldn't talk straight in those days (not exact quote)--before the days of speech therapists in the public schools, which she doesn't say. I will read it again sometime, and very few books will I do that to.
The Federal Government has NEVER paid pensions to Confederate Veterans. Their pensions were paid by their respective states.
True, as mentioned in the article. My bad. Still, a goverment and its citizens were still paying the price of the Civil War until just now. The Federal Government paid its last widow's benefit only last year.
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