America’s Last Civil War Veterans and Participants : An Investigation By Garry Victor Hill Revised and Expanded Edition 2 3 America’s Last Civil War Veterans and Participants: An Investigation By Garry Victor Hill Revised and Expanded Edition Frisky Press Armidale Australia 2020 4 America’s Last Civil War Veterans and Participants: An Investigation By Garry Victor Hill 5 Contents Disclaimer page 6 Personal Acknowledgements page 7 General Acknowledgements page 8 Dedication page 10 Introduction page 11 Part One page 20 Part Two page 92 Afterword page 374 Works Cited page 375 6 Disclaimer Interposed throughout this work are images of Civil War battle flags. They are used to aid the reader to determine allegiance of claimants to Civil War service. For e-book readers they make scrolling easier. Using the Union’s flag here does not make this writer an American patriot, nor does displaying Confederate flags express support for any political group that uses that flag. Usage of Confederate flags by twenty-first century white hate groups, ultra conservatives, and right wing extremists is a false misuse of history. Written Without Prejudice No suggestion of fraud or deceit is made against any individual. Where statements have not been fully verified this is due to a lack of conclusive evidence, conflicting evidence or impossibilities. A Note on language Grammar, spelling or syntax in quotations remain unaltered. The old style of putting a p preceding a page number has been used to avoid confusion with computer numbers. Americanised spellings are used. As two differing dating systems, those of the USA and the British Commonwealth conflict, months rather than their numbers are sometimes used. Copyright © Garry Victor Hill 2017 Text only. Normal use for academic or critical purposes is allowed. Reproduction in whole or in part is not. Illustrations are used after checking for their status then following requested steps. This checking system applies even for illustrations from copyright lapsing before 1923. Most are from Wikipedia/Wikimedia, The Library of Congress, the Public Domain or Creative Commons. Others have permissive use from the owner. No protective system is perfect. If any illustration has been put in internet sources and then inadvertently used contact the author and it will be removed or acknowledged. As a registered Australian teacher the author is legally allowed to use pictures and quotes for educational and review purposes. This book has been used in schools and universities. 7 Errata Earlier editions had a long errata section. The errors fell into three main categories, typos, style (syntax, grammar and prolixity) and factual errors. They have been corrected, but given the nature of the evidence the last remains tricky and frequently disputed. Virtually everyone writing on the topic admits this. Personal Acknowledgements Okiku Saji and Frank Grzyb unstintingly and generously did considerable work to raise the accuracy and quality of this work with their research, knowledge and advice. Professor Jay S. Hoar’s epic study Sunset and Dusk of the Blue and the Gray must be essential for any scholar working in the topic of the last Civil War veterans. This trilogy starts with The North’s Last Boys in Blue Volume I. This work serves partly an investigation, partly a tribute to those Union veterans still alive between 1940 and 1946. Volume II continues with those living beyond 1946 and contains supplementary information concerning nurses, false claimants and child soldiers. The final section The South’s Last Boys in Gray. Volume III does the same for the former rebels alive from the 1940s through to the 1950s. The three books are an epic and an elegy for the common men who served in the war, then rebuilt the nation. This work which was initially intended as an article written to reassess the record of those claimants to Confederate service alive after Pleasant Crump died. This very limited aim rapidly revealed inadequacies - of lacking enough information and not including Union participants and nurses. Another point to develop became obvious, the one that Professor Hoar made. The focus was broadened to touch on those aspects of the war that impacted on the lives of the individuals here. 8 General Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude for the valuable contributions made by the following individuals during the research and writing process: Mrs Margaret Alley of California for her work on Felix Melvin Witkoski and Thomas Ross; C. Michael Anderson of Prospect, Connecticut for good advice on texts and information for Sarah Rockwell and advising me to contact Professor Hoar; Linda Murray Baker of South Carolina for information on Arnold Murray; Cherri Butler of Fitzgerald Georgia for her work on William J. Bush; Wade H. Dorsey, a South Carolina History archivist for work on Arnold Murray; Genevieve Preston for the use of the photo of James Erwin, courtesy of San Bernardino County Historical Archives; Thomas P. Cole of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library for information on W.W. Alexander; John P. Deeben, Archives Specialist of the National Archives, Washington D.C. for information on the 11th South Carolina Volunteers; Peggy Dillard of the website Tennrebgirl for the use of UCV 1913 reunion photo; Charles Green of Steubenville’s Historic Society for information on Red Cloud; Frank L. Grzyb for his suggestions with information and editing; Steve Groggins of Georgia for information on William J. Bush; Professor Jay S. Hoar of Maine, the world’s outstanding authority on the veterans, for copyright permissions, general advice and a massive donation of books, photos and material; Kim Jenkins for use of the photo of William Magee’s memorial. Linda K. Lehman and Donna Peternell for photographs and clippings of James Erwin; Paula of Find A Grave for permission to use the photo of Riddle’s grave. Joyce Milhorn Plunkett for compiling information and photographs for the section on Red Cloud provided by Ernest L. Plunkett, brother in law to Chief Red Cloud, son of Joseph A. Plunkett; John McClure of the Virginia Historical Society for his vital help on Thomas Evans Riddle; 9 Richard Menard for the use of his copyrighted photograph of William J. Bush; Martha Cross Mordecai for information on W.W. Alexander and photographic permission; Harold Ott and The Jonesboro Sun for help with the Loudermilks; Virginia Skeffington for photographic permissions for Frank Mayer. Okiku Saji for finding Patrick O’ Leary and information on other claimants; Irvin Shuler of South Carolina for use of the photo of Arnold Murray and other information; Michael Vetman of the Indiana State archives for information on William Kinney; Cheryl Wasserman of the Fort Christmas Staff for her information about the fort; Jim/Six Dog Team and Find-A-Grave fot pictures of John Salling The Library of Congress for illustrations which are not restricted by copyright; Thanks to the Danbury Museum archivists, the Virginia Library and Arkansas State Archives; Thanks to several others for copyright permissions and to all those writers, researchers, archivists, genealogists, bloggers, website staff and contributors too numerous to mention who helped me complete this endeavour. 10 Dedication To Professor Jay S. Hoar, a pioneer in the study of America’s Civil War veterans. Without his help this work would have been filled with errors and have numerous omissions. He hates war and likes people. He is a wise man. 11 General Warren at Little Round Top. Courtesy of the National Parks Service/Public Domain Introduction “Why do you care about them? They are all dead now.” This book grew out of that question asked in school as I was engrossed in reading of the American Civil War in an Australian regional city. Actually they were “not all dead” back then early in the second half of the 1950s. Whatever the literal truth, the question still resonates. Several Americans have asked it more politely during the research and writing of this book. In childhood I could not answer it and still cannot, at least not fully. In Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, our culture was dominated by America and England. We saw most of the same television programs and films featuring the Civil War as Americans did. My hometown had Australia’s largest public library so there was an ample supply of books on the 12 topic and of history in general. The interest in the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Wild West was part of a wider personal fascination with heroes, history and with fiction, wherever they appeared, on paper, the stage and on screen. Reading the classic comics version of The Red Badge of Courage and seeing the paintings of Howard Pyle and his Brandywine School were early influences which fuelled the imagination. The Civil War as depicted in the 1950s and 1960s was a world where To Kill a Mockingbird, Across Five Aprils, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, The Horse Soldiers, The Red Badge of Courage, and on the other side The Gray Ghost, The Raid, Bronco and Gone With The Wind could enthral and gain sympathy from multitudes. Lee and Lincoln could both be admired and race was not then the ubiquitous issue it has since become. Rifles For Watie was one work read back then which clearly contained this duality: a Northern boy finds himself behind Confederate lines and most Southerners are depicted with sympathy. This certainly reflected my childhood uncertainties. Having in childhood an Irish and American influenced accent that made me sound more like an American Southerner than an Australian made for empathy with the South, but 1860s slavery and 1960s racism left me uneasy. Now in old age interests that developed in junior primary have never left; history, folk music and legends, fiction, cinema, Celtic culture and societies in revolution, namely Spain, Russia and Ireland in the twentieth century and seventeenth century England.