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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/19/2003 4:44:03 PM PST by SlickWillard
BLAINE, Tenn. (AP) - Gertrude Janeway, the last widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, has died in the three-room log cabin where she lived most of her life. She was 93.
Bedridden for years, she died Friday, more than six decades after the passing of the man she called the love of her life, John Janeway, who married her when he was 81 and she was barely 18.
"She was a special person," said the Rev. Leonard Goins, who officiated at her funeral Sunday.
"Gertie, as she was called, had a vision beyond that (cabin) that kept her going. She never had any wavering or doubt in her salvation. She was strong in that," he said.
She was to be buried Monday near her husband's slender military tombstone at tiny New Corinth Church cemetery.
An honorary member of the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Mrs. Janeway was the last recognized Union widow. She received a $70 check each month from the Veterans Administration.
Still alive is Confederate widow Alberta Martin, 95, of Elba, Ala.
Mrs. Janeway, who lived her whole life in Blaine, about 30 miles north of Knoxville, was born 44 years after the Civil War ended.
In a 1998 interview, she said her husband rarely spoke about the war.
"He says the nighest he ever got to gettin' killed was when they shot a hole through his hat brim," she said, but he never told her where that happened.
Her husband was a 19-year-old Grainger County farm boy who ran away to enlist in 1864 after being encouraged by a group of Union horse soldiers that he met on his way to a Blount County grist mill.
He sent his horse home and signed up under the surname January because "he was afraid his people would come and claim him," Mrs. Janeway said.
Two months later, he was captured by Confederates near Athens, Ga. He was later released and rejoined his unit, the 14th Illinois Cavalry. After the war, he spent many years in California before returning home to Tennessee and meeting then 16-year-old Gertrude.
Mrs. Janeway said her mother refused to sign papers to let her marry him before she turned 18. "So my man says, 'Well, I will wait for her until you won't have to,'" she recalled. "We sparked for three years."
She remembered getting married in the middle of a dirt road in 1927 with family and friends gathered around. He bought her the cabin in 1932 and it was there that he died in 1937, at 91, from pneumonia.
"After he died, why it just seemed like a part of me went down under the ground with him," she said in the 1998 interview. "He is the only one I ever had. There wasn't anybody else."
AP-ES-01-19-03 1454EST
This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAQ5PWE5BD.html
A fragile link with history
[a 1998 Mansfield article that includes pictures]The Oldest Living Civil War Widow
A Love Story - John Janeway and Gertrude Grubb - 14th Illinois Cavalry
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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R.I.P. Gertie.
hehehehehe...we win afterall!
What a load of horse crap this article is and what a load of puckee is the wee lass.
History may make something of this but I'll be damned if I will.
Leni
There's nothing quite so fine as a nice long-term sparkin' I always say.
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
History is now.
FReegards,
Slings and Arrows
When a liberal marxist gets elected...
When we vote in liberal marxists, it doesn't matter which side of the isle they claim allegence to. They are capable of doing damage to this nation far longer than all but a few people imagin.
Let's say a mid-thirties Republican gets elected. He's left of center but he's supposedly signed off on because he's all we could hope to get elected in that district. Being in his mid-thirties he could easily serve until he's 95 plus. So he could affect legislation, and more importantly judicial appointments for upwards of sixty years.
This is bad enough. But let's say that in his 60th year of service in the Senate, he votes with the majority to place a left of center candidate into a judgeship for life. If that candidate to be judge was 40 years old, he/she could serve for 40 to 60 years themselves.
It is not out of the question to think that one socialist/marxist elected to office could affect this nation negatively for upwards of 120 years.
If we voted in a liberal Senator today, someone he helped to appoint to a judgeship could be making rulings until the year 2123.
So much for the "it took 70/100/120 years to get here, it's going to take a long time to change things" theory of politics. We have to do everything in our power to make sure no liberal/marxists are ever again elected to public office. If that means replacing RINOs with genuine Conservatives Republicans on the way to an election, so be it.
We're not going to win this thing until we get our heads right. Then when we have our heads in the game, perhaps we'll start to win it.
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