http://allnurses.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30896
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Civil War's Last Widow Shares Her Memories
BY DAVID LAMB
LOS ANGELES TIMES
ENTERPRISE, Ala. -- A friend of Alberta Martin's came calling the other day to give the 96-year-old widow news of a death. She awaited him at the nursing home in her wheelchair, wearing red beads and her best dress, a Confederate flag spread over her lap. She nibbled on a bag of cheese puffs.
"Miz Alberta," said the friend, Ken Chancey. "You remember the Yankee widow you met some years back? Gertrude Janeway? Well, she died last week. You're all America's got left now. You're the last surviving widow of a Civil War soldier. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
The woman nodded but said nothing. Gertrude Janeway, 93, whose husband fought for the Union, had died in the Tennessee log cabin where she had lived most of her life. Now, 138 years after the war ended and 45 years after the death of its last veteran, there is only Alberta Martin, frail and forgetful, the last widow of the 3.2 million men who fought America's bloodiest war.
His Third Wife: Miz Alberta, as everyone calls her, was in good spirits the day Chancey visited. He was dressed for the occasion, like the four men with him, in a Confederate uniform. She clutched their hands and hugged them and memories long locked away were set free: memories about growing up poor in the cotton and peanut fields of Alabama ("Lord, how my hands blistered running spools of thread through them in that mill"); about her struggles to secure a pension ("I felt like the country turned its back on me"); about her late husband, a veteran of Alabama's 4th Infantry Regiment, now dead for seven decades.
"Mr. Martin -- that's what I always called him, Mr. Martin -- never did talk much about the war," she recalled. "Except he'd tell me how cold and wet it was up in Richmond, how he'd wrap blankets around himself in the trenches and how when he crossed a field he'd dig up potatoes and eat them raw because he was so hungry."
Miz Alberta, abandoned by the taxi driver she had married as a teenager, was 21 when, in 1927, she became the third wife of William Jasper Martin, an 81-year-old former private in the Confederate army. Their courtship was brief, spanning just a few words spoken over a picket fence in Opp, when he had stopped to chat on his daily amble into town to play dominoes with his war buddies. He was a handsome man with a bushy mustache, a quick temper and a $50-a-month military pension -- a princely sum in those days for a woman stalked her whole life by poverty. He was lonely, she was needy. The couple were serenaded with cowbells and horns on their wedding night.
'Old Man's Darling': "Love him? I don't know," she told National Public Radio in 1998. "It ain't the same love that you got for a young man, if that's what you're asking. He slept on one bed and me on the other one. People when they get old like that, they don't require kissing and hugging and necking and one thing or another. The old saying is, 'Better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave.' "
Nonetheless, she bore him a son, Willie, which pleased Martin so much he would strut through town with the boy on his shoulders. "My life with Mr. Martin was hard but it was a good life too. We were happy," she said. He died after less than five years of marriage. Eight weeks later, Alberta Martin married his grandson by a previous marriage, a union that set so many tongues wagging in town the local Baptist preacher had to study the Scriptures before deciding she hadn't committed a sin.
For most of her 50 years with Charlie Martin, Miz Alberta -- who had a seventh-grade education and was the daughter of sharecroppers -- lived in obscurity and poverty. When Chancey, a dentist and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, found her in 1996, widowed again, she was living in a small house without air conditioning where she kept a portrait of Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in which William Jasper Martin had served.
"She asked for two things," said Chancey, the widow's guardian. "One, could the SCV get her recognition as the last Confederate widow? She said she'd never done anything all that important in life, but she had married into history and that history was part of the nation's. And two, could we help her get a Confederate pension. I said I'd try."
In 1895, Alabama passed a 1 mil (one-tenth of a cent) tax to provide pensions for Civil War veterans and their widows who had a net worth of less than $400. By the 1940s, the fund had grown into millions of dollars and was administered by 17 people, although only a handful of eligible recipients were still alive. Alabama still collects the tax and, with no Civil War widows left except Martin, taps into the $30 million nest egg to support the state's human resources department, the veterans' administration and a Confederate cemetery in Marbury.
The legislative battle -- eventually successful -- to switch Martin from a federally run World War II pension (earned by her third husband) to a more substantial state-financed Confederate pension (earned by her second) made the white-haired, kindly widow a celebrity of sorts in the South.
The man who made her part of history is buried under a spreading cedar tree in Opp, his grave identified by a simple VA marker. She will be buried in another cemetery, next to his grandson, with whom she spent half a century. In planning her funeral, she has asked that the Confederate flag covering her lap the other day be draped over her mule-drawn casket.
===========================================================================
http://alabamadivision.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=51
Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 1:11 am Post subject: Mrs. Alberta Martin, Last Living Confederate Widow
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ladies & Gentlemen,
I have received the following on Mrs. Alberta Martin and felt I should share thiswith everyone. I will pass along more information as I receive it.
-------------------------------------------
Funeral for the Last Widow of the War Between the States
Gentlemen,
I have the honor to inform you that Mrs. Alberta Martin, widow of Pvt.
William J. Martin, 4th Alabama Infantry, is lingering near death in the
hospital at Elba, Alabama.
Her prognosis is terminal but stable. She is not on life support (per
her wishes) and could die at any time. However, according to her
physician, she could live for days or even weeks. Her funeral will be held
on a Saturday (per her wishes, based on the knowledge that her unique roll in history
will prompt many to wish to attend). Her funeral will not be
held this Saturday (May 22). It can be held on any Saturday following,
pending the will of the Almighty.
I have the honor to be in charge of reenactor participation. This is
not a reenactment. This is a funeral in honor of the passing of an era and
the preservation of its memory. ALL are welcome (The more the better.
Please spread the word). There will be a funeral video made. There
will probably be national news media present.
The funeral service will begin at 1PM. It will last @ one hour. It will be conducted
at the 1st Assembly of Elba Church (Map is coming ASAP).
It only seats @500. In the interest of what's best for Mrs. Martin's
family and the possible turnout, we as reenactors should not enter the
Church.
However, there is an adjoining Fellowship Hall (which is air
conditioned) which will be available for reenactors which will have an audio connection with the sanctuary.
Those who attend the Church service will need to leave the service
thirty minutes early in order to drive (six miles) to the Coffee County Coop facility. Parking at the Church is very limited.
The larger our
turnout, the better it will be for reenactors to skip the Church service and go directly to the Coffee County Coop (Map is coming ASAP). From the
Coop, there is a dirt road that runs half a mile to the cemetery. Depending
on our turnout, we'll have a reenactor CS Color Guard and a reenactor US
Color Guard to lead the procession(NOTE: I think you'll all agree
that a US Civil War presence is highly appropriate. However, any other US
reenactors will be placed behind the CS reenactors in the procession
as this is after all, a Confederate occasion); an Honor Guard Company (or
Battalion, depending on the numbers) to follow the casket on the mule
drawn wagon (or failing that, the hearse) in the procession. It can be
composed of all branches. If we have a large turnout, we'll line the
road on both sides with troops, who will fall in behind the Honor Guard as
it files past. We will Reverse Arms and march to the funeral dirge for 50
yards inside the cemetery. Music for the half mile march and the
cemetery dirge will be provided by Olde Towne Brass (19th Alabama Band). We will have a company to fire
the salutes and Honor Guards at grave side.
We want to insure all dignity for Mrs. Martin's family first, and give
all honor to what her position in history represents as well.
Your uniform should be your best. Arms and leather gear are
encouraged.
Canteens are mandatory. White gloves are encouraged. No haversacks. It
WILL be hot. Those of you who don't do well in the heat should not
attend as uniformed soldiers (We don't want a medical emergency at the
funeral if at all possible).
If for whatever reason I am unable to attend, Lt. Colonel Dave Neel
will take charge of the reenactors. His email address is included on this
message.
Thank you for dedication and your willingness to be on "Stand By" for
participation in this unique occasion.
I look forward to serving with you at the funeral.
Until then, I remain,
Your Obedient Servant,
Bill
W.G. Rambo, Brig. Gen'l comdg
[log in to unmask]
Martin Funeral
http://www.searchforancestors.com/genhelp/military/confederate.html
Other states are listed here also.
TEXAS
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
web pages: Genealogy and Archives & Manuscripts
P.O. Box 12927
Austin, TX 78711
Telephone: 512-463-5480
In 1881 Texas set aside 1,280 acres for disabled Confederate veterans. In 1889 the State began granting pensions to indigent Confederate veterans and their widows. Muster rolls of State militia in Confederate service are also available. A published index is available in many libraries:
White, Virgil D. Index to Texas CSA Pension Files (Waynesboro, TN: National Historical Publishing Co., 1989).
and online:
Index to Texas Confederate Pension Applications, 1899-1975
Confederate Indigent Families Lists, 1863-1865
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html
|
