Last Living Civil War Widow
Mrs. Alberta Martin
| You may read the plans that were made for Mrs. Martin's funeral at http://lastconfederatewidow.com/funeral.htm She lay in state at the White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery, AL, followed by a lovely service at First Assembly of God Church in Elba, and the interment at New Ebenezer Baptist Church Cemetery, Curtis, Alabama. The funeral was on June 12, 2004. |
| ...The graveside service will be a Confederate heritage service. The Confederate reenactors and other period dress reenactors should proceed to the Coffee County Co-op building, which is ˝ mile from New Ebenezer Baptist Church. Mrs. Martin’s casket will be transferred from the funeral home vehicle to a mule-drawn wagon at the Coffee County Co-op building. The Black Rose will be paying our tribute to Mrs. Martin by marching directly behind her mule drawn wagon. The Confederate Reenactor Funeral procession will be for the ˝ mile funeral march to the New Ebenezer Church Cemetery. Bill Rambo, of Confederate Memorial Park, Marbury, Alabama, will be in charge of the Confederate reenactor activities... |
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Funeral Information - Updated: May 31, 2004 Dear Friends, It is my sorrowful duty to inform you that Mrs. Alberta Martin, the last known living widow of a War Between the States veteran, died today, May 31st, Memorial Day, at 12:30 PM at Enterprise Nursing Home, Enterprise, AL. She died peacefully of congestive heart failure, surrounded by her sister Lera, age 94, two of her grandchildren, a fellow church lady, a niece and myself. Sincerely, |
| Last update: May 31, 2004 at 6:05 PM
Last widow of Civil War veteran dies at age 97 MONTGOMERY, ALA. -- Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died Monday, 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, Ala., of complications from a heart attack she suffered May 7, said her caretaker, Dr. Kenneth Chancey. 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 for most of her life, in her final years the Sons of Confederate Veterans 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. 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. Associated Press © Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. |
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-05-31-war-widow_x.htm |
| From: laura Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 3:41 PM More good news…..Saturday May 22, 2004, I just spoken with Russell Darden he said Dr. Chancey called and said Mrs. Martin is using her arms and saying Hi to the nurses. Such great news, please keep Mrs. Martin in your thoughts and prayers. Let everyone in your state know of her progress. Send Mrs. Martin a card: Mrs. Alberta Martin C/O Mr. Ken Chancey P.O. Box 311087 Enterprise, Alabama 36331 |
| Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 8:03 PM Subject: Good News on the Condition of Last Conf. Widow--Mrs. Alberta Martin Dear All, Russell Darden just called and good news. Mrs. Martin has stabilized her breathing has improved and is resting comfortable. She has rallied once again, but by no means out of the woods but has improved enough to go back to the nursing home. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers for Russell said that made the difference. Russell will keep me informed and in turn I will keep you up to date. Laura |
| Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 7:47 PM From: Bob May Bulletin on Condition of Last Conf. Widow--Mrs. Alberta Martin |
| Gertrude Grubb Janeway, age 93,
the
last known living widow of a Union soldier, died Friday Jan. 19,
2003
Mrs. Daisy Anderson, the last known living widow of a Black Union soldier, died in September 1998, at the age of 97. Go to a page telling about these last two widows of CW Union soliders. |
| Widow provides last link to Civil War By David Lamb | National Correspondent Posted February 9, 2003 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 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. 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'd 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, and she was needy. The couple wereserenaded with cowbells and horns on their wedding night. "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'd 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 that 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 at the end of a dirt road in Elba, 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-mill(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 man who made her part of history is buried under a spreading cedar tree in Opp. 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 "Beyond the Sunset" be sung and that the Confederate flag covering her lap the other day be draped over her mule-drawn casket. David Lamb is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper. Copyright © 2003, Orlando Sentinel |
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Alberta Martin becomes last surviving Civil War widow Jan 29 2003 By Carole Brand, Sun Staff Writer Click here to go to ZWIRE webpage. Alberta Martin of Enterprise became the last surviving Civil War widow Jan. 17, when the last surviving Union widow, Gertrude Grubb Janeway, died in Blaine, Tenn., making Martin the only surviving link to the nation's Civil War. Martin had previously been noted as the "last surviving Confederate widow" before the death of Janeway. Dr. Ken Chancey, a member of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans organization, said "with almost 3.5 million men who fought on both sides of the war, it is amazing that Mrs. Martin is our last surviving treasure from that war." News of Martin's newest title as the "last surviving widow of the Civil War" has spread nationwide. A reporter from the Los Angelos Times newspaper, David Lamb, came to Enterprise Monday to interview Martin with Chancey and Civil War re-enactors at her side. Chancey said he has already been contacted by NBC, ABC and PBS news. "She is just a rare person to say that her husband fought in the Civil War. No one else in the world can say that," Chancey noted. Martin, now 96, married Pvt. William Jasper Martin who had joined the Confederate Army in 1864. In 1927 at age 81, the former soldier asked a young Alberta, 21, to marry him after a brief courtship over a picket fence. The two wed at an Andalusia courthouse Dec. 10, 1927. The Martins were married for four and a half years and had one son, Willie. It was said the former Confederate soldier would periodically take his son into town, showing him off by carrying the lad on his shoulders. Martin died July 8, 1932. He is buried at the Cool Springs Primitive Baptist Church cemetery near Opp. Martin served in Company K of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment and had told his young wife how hungry he and the rest of the men got during the war. He said on passing a field, they would dig frantically to find a potato or something left to eat from the harvest. Chancey said Martin finally began receiving a pension in 1996 from the Alabama State Pension for the Widows of Confederate Soldiers, Sailors and Marines. Monday, Jan. 20, the date commemorating the birth of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Chancey invited Gen. Robert E. Lee re-enactor Al Stone, to pay a visit to Martin who resides at the Enterprise Nursing Home. Stone has been portraying Lee for nine years at re-enactments and has made live presentations and special appearances as the general. The public was also invited Monday evening for a reception honoring Mrs. Martin. "It's an honor to have Gen. Robert E. Lee visit Mrs. Martin," Chancey said. "We wanted to honor her also since her husband fought under Gen. Lee's command in northern Virginia." Chancey said many Alabama regiments during the Civil War fought in the northern Virginia area. Stone, a Lee look-a-like, was selected to portray Gen. Lee in the filming of "The Trail of Robert E. Lee" last March at Liberty University, and has posed for professional photographs at the surrender table used by Gen. Lee in the McLean home at Appomattox, Va., and at Lee's original home in Richmond, Va. Stone has also appeared as Lee at the Antietam National Battlefield and Cemetery, in Tamarac, W. Va., at a ceremony in Troy, Ohio, and was selected to portray Gen. Lee for the West Virginia Humanities Council's "History Alive" program. He also made a presentation at The Greenbrier Hotel, one of America's premier resorts. Stone's personal appearance as Lee strikes a remarkable resemblance of the Confederate general. Stone is 57 years old, 5-feet-10 inches, 170 pounds, hair mostly gray with a mostly gray mustache and beard. In 1861, a description of Lee was similar: Age 54 years, 5-feet-11 inches, weight was slightly less than 170, hair was mostly gray with a gray mustache and beard. Chancey, Stone and Shirley Stone, portraying Lee's wife, also dressed in southern belle attire while presenting themselves to Martin Monday evening. Chancey introduced Martin to "Lee" as he presented her with a dozen roses for the occasion. "I wanted to give you these roses on behalf of all the Sons of the Confederate Soldiers to commemorate Gen. Lee's birthday and in honor of your husband fighting under his command," Stone said. Along with Lee, Mrs. Martin's great-great-grandson Chris Seaton, was a special guest. Seaton, also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, brought a replica of Gen. Lee's personal flag he carried with him during the war. Visitor Bill McGowan from Geneva also came to meet the last surviving Civil War widow. "I've been interested in the Civil War since I was in the seventh grade," he said. "I heard about the reception and thought this would be a perfect opportunity to meet Mrs. Martin." Chancey said he was glad he had a chance to invite Gen. Lee and the other guests to meet Martin. "She's such a special part of history and the only personal link we'll ever have to part of our heritage and to a war that affected so many," Chancey said. Martin has been to numerous Civil War reenactments and Confederate grave dedications. She has been a guest of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and honored at the dedication of the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. She has been featured in every major newspaper in America, including the front page of the New York Times and in People Magazine. Martin celebrated her 96th birthday Dec. 4, and received greetings from 14 governors all over the country, Chancey said. "Between Thanksgiving and Christmas she also received anywhere from 600 to 800 cards," he said. "She's one special lady and she's that one unique connection to the Civil War we thought had been lost but we've got part of history living right here with us." 
Click on thumbnail to see larger image; then click on Back button.(Photo): As the "last surviving widow of a Civil War veteran," Alberta Martin, 96, is honored by, from left, Gen. Robert E. Lee, Civil War re-enactor Al Stone; Chris Seaton, great-great-grandson and great nephew of Mrs. Martin; and member of the Sons of Confederate Soldiers Dr. Ken Chancey. The group stands in front of a replica of Gen. Lee's personal flag. ©Southeast Sun 2003 Current Opinions (If you go to the zwire page, you can submit an opinion.) - - - - Jan, 30 2003 sir. I truly enjoyed your article on Mrs. Alberta Martin. She is and should be considered a National Treasure. With all the horror that came with that war, it seems ironic that one very fragile Southern lady is our country's last living link to a time that plunged our nation into such chaos never before or after witnessed. In this world we so often take for granted,it would serve us well to stop and reflect upon the men ,women, and children of that war and all the sacrifices made, which in turn has created the America we love today. Just think upon the changes Mrs. Martin has seen in her lifetime. Warmest regards, T R Warren Commander Pvt Spince Blankenship camp 1802 SCV Ill. Division Name: T R Warren E-Mail:tandpam2SHAWNEELINK.NET |
| http://www.confederate-rose.org/ncocr/widow.htm |
| Living Union Civil War Widows and Children Updated January 2003 http://suvcw.org/kids/CWkids.pdf |
 
Some links to more photos of Mrs. Martin: |
Please send all cards to:
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