Last Person to Receive Civil War-Era Pension Dies
Irene Triplett, the last person receiving a pension from the U.S. Civil War, has died at the age of 90.
Ms. Triplett’s father, Mose Triplett, started fighting in the war for the Confederacy, but defected to the North in 1863. That decision earned his daughter Irene, the product of a late-in-life marriage to a woman almost 50 years his junior, a pension of $73.13 a month from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Ms. Triplett, who suffered from mental disabilities, qualified for federal financial support as a helpless adult child of a veteran. She died Sunday from complications following surgery for injuries from a fall, according to the Wilkesboro, N.C., nursing home where she lived.
The Triplett family was the subject of a Page One article in The Wall Street Journal in 2014.
Pvt. Triplett enlisted in the 53rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment in May 1862, then transferred to the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment early the following year, according to Confederate records. He fell ill as his regiment marched north toward Gettysburg and remained behind in a Virginia military hospital.
He ran away from the hospital, records show, while his unit suffered devastating losses at Gettysburg. Of the 800 men in the 26th North Carolina, 734 were killed, wounded or captured in the battle Pvt. Triplett missed.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/last-person-to-receive-a-civil-war-era-pension-dies-11591141193?mod=djemalertNEWS
Amazing story!!!!
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