Remembering Albert Woolson (1850-1956), the last Union veteran of the Civil War
A Veterans Day tribute
Albert Woolson at the age of 103, with his granddaughter Frances.
Albert Henry Woolson, the last of the more than 2.6 million enlisted Union soldiers in the American Civil War, began his life on February 11, 1850 in Antwerp, New York, at the time a town of 2,665 people located 23 miles south of Watertown. The population has decreased in the 170+ years since - as of the 2020 census, the residents number 1,846. He was the third of four children of Willard Paul Woolson (1811-1965) and his wife Caroline (née Baldwin) (1820-1909).
His father Willard could have been considered a jack-of-all-trades - a chairmaker, a painter, and a musician.
In 1861, Willard packed up and left for southern Minnesota without any explanation, enlisting in the Company I of the Fourth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry on November 9 and joining the band.
He was injured in a steamboat accident on May 13, 1862, and received a disability discharge two months later. His family rushed to Minnesota to join him as he recuperated in a hospital in Mankato.
Albert wanted to follow his father into service. So, age 14, he enlisted in Company C of the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery on October 10, 1864, becoming a drummer boy. The regiment never saw combat, instead spending the last few months of the war stationed in Chattanooga, ready to defend the city from an attack by John Bell Hood that never came. He was discharged on September 7, 1865.
His father ultimately succumbed following a leg amputation, leaving his mother a widow. The knife would twist deeper three years later, when Albert's younger brother Frank died at age 16 in 1868.
For a time, Albert played in a traveling minstrel group, before returning home.
On January 10, 1869, in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, he married Sarah Jane Sloper (1849-1901). The couple moved around southern Minnesota over the next few decades, first to Nicollet County, then to Waseca County, back to Nicollet County, and then settling down in Windom. The couple had ten children, seven of whom made it to adulthood.
During this time, Albert followed his father in being a jack-of-all-trades - boiler inspector, superintendent of water works and electricity plants in Windom, and a music and engineering teacher in Wilder.
On December 6, 1901, Sarah passed away at the age of 62 in Windom. Apparently not fond of being a widower, Albert remarried on September 1, 1904 in Windom to Anna Haugen (1884-1949), a Norwegian immigrant thirty-four years his junior.
In 1905, Albert and Anna moved to Duluth, where they would live the rest of their lives. Together, they had four more children, all of them girls, of which three reached adulthood.
As the years passed, Albert began to inflate his age. In state and federal censuses from 1875 to 1900, he gave ages indicating birth in 1848 - something very much contradicted by his listing in the 1850 United States Census as six months old and in the 1855 New York state census as 5 years old. In 1910 he gave his correct age, 60, but from 1920 to 1950 he gave census enumerators ages consistent with the birth year of 1847 that he would publicly claim in the last years of his life.
In 1911, Albert sued the Governor of Minnesota, Adolph Olson Eberhart, over the fact that he had not been appointed the state boiler inspector for the congressional district in which he resided, citing his thirty-five years' worth of experience and his service as a military veteran, based on a law requiring the Governor to show favoritism to veterans in state employment. Instead, the judge ruled the law unconstitutional.
In 1938, Woolson attended the 75th anniversary reunion at Gettysburg along with thousands of other veterans both Union and Confederate.
Always an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization for Union veterans, Woolson would ultimately live to be the last surviving member.
In June 1944, aged 94, he expressed confidence in Dwight D. Eisenhower's ability to win World War II, telling a reporter, "He's not only going in from the front but from the rear, too, and that's the way to save lives."
On February 11, 1947, his 97th (claimed 100th) birthday, he awoke feeling "like a two-year-old colt."
On February 11, 1949, his 99th (claimed 102nd) birthday, he thumped his chest and declared "I'll be around a long time yet."
On Memorial Day in 1949, he joined with fellow 99-year-old veteran Frank Mayer of Fairplay, Colorado, who had likewise been a drummer boy during the war, in a march to Grant's tomb in New York City to lay a wreath.
On November 20, 1949, Albert became a widower for a second time, when Anna passed away at the age of 65. Unable to live alone, his daughter Gertrude Kobus and her husband John moved in with him to take care of him.
In August of 1950, the first year that there was not a national encampment of GAR members, he was reported as being "restless and melancholy."
On February 11, 1951, his 101st (claimed 104th) birthday, when a reporter asked him if he was still willing to defend his country, he boasted "Certainly, I'd grab a gun."
On September 17, 1951, with the passing of 99-year-old William Peter of Heron Lake, who had worked as a teamster during the war, Woolson became the last living Civil War veteran in the state of Minnesota.
On his 102nd (claimed 105th) birthday in 1952, he spoke at Duluth City Hall for about ten minutes, recalling seeing Abraham Lincoln in a debate in Albany along with his father as young boy, and declared he felt "like a million."
Woolson was a lifelong Republican. In November 1952, he voted for the final time in a presidential election for Dwight D. Eisenhower.
As New Year's Day 1953 approached, Woolson was asked about his hopes for 1953. His response? "We are working for peace in our time and it is my sincere hope that giant strides are made in 1953. I am confident that our new president will help this. Good health is something for all of us to hope for."
Albert Woolson on his 103rd birthday in 1953.
On his 103rd (claimed 106th) birthday in 1953, he declared "I'll outlive him. I'll outlive my daughter here" and pointed to Gertrude when asked by a reporter if he believed that he would outlive James Hard of Rochester, New York, who at 109 (claimed 111), was erroneously reported to be the only other surviving Union veteran (in reality, Frank Mayer, mentioned earlier, was also still alive).
On March 12, 1953, his prediction came true, as 109-year-old James Hard succumbed in a Rochester hospital following a leg amputation. Woolson learned about it in the newspaper the next day, and, upset by the news, promptly grabbed a pen and wrote a letter of condolences to Hard's family.
There were seven people left who could have been considered "veterans" of the Civil War, enlisted or otherwise. Along with Woolson and Mayer, the others were William Kiney, a 107-year-old resident of Indianapolis who had fought at the Battle of Shiloh for the Confederacy, 109-year-old Sarah Rockwell of Danbury, Connecticut, who had worked as a nurse in Richmond, 100-year-old (although she claimed to be two decades older) Hattie Carter of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, a former slave who had worked as a food, gun, and ammunition runner at Richmond, 96-year-old (claimed 106) John Salling of Slant, Virginia, who had worked as a Confederate saltpeter digger, and 98-year-old (claimed 110) Walter Williams of Houston, who had been a forager for passing Confederate forces.
Over the next few months, the numbers thinned. William Kiney died on June 23, 1953, the last combat veteran of the war. Rockwell passed away a month after her 110th birthday, on November 23, 1953.
Albert Woolson on his 104th birthday in 1954.
On February 11, 1954, his 104th (claimed 107th) birthday, Woolson received a birthday letter from Eisenhower, along with many other gifts from people across the nation. "I'm almost smothered in kind wishes," he said, adding that he was "just beginning to feel like I'm not a boy any more."
The next day, Frank Mayer passed away in Fairplay, Colorado at the age of 103, and Woolson became the last living Union veteran.
On February 11, 1955, his 105th (claimed 108th) birthday, Woolson received another congratulatory letter from President Eisenhower. Woolson wrote back to him, asking him to exercise caution when it came to the Taiwan Strait Crisis between the Communist regime in China and the Nationalist regime in Taiwan over control of several islands in the Taiwan Strait.
After a brief hospital scare in 1955, Woolson appeared to be on the mend.
Nearly two years passed before the next decrease in the numbers, when Hattie Carter passed away on January 9, 1956 at the age of 103. She claimed to have been 122, and newspapers described her as such.
It was just the three of them now - Woolson, Salling, and Williams. A fourth man likewise claimed to be a Civil War veteran, William Lundy of Laurel Hill, Florida, and he was recognized as such at the time, but as discussed in a prior article of mine, Lundy was in fact born in 1861 and a participant in a case of pension fraud that had lasted over twenty years by the time he had died.
The hospital stays became a regular of Woolson's last months. In January 1956, he spent time in the hospital for fatigue and lung congestion.
Albert Woolson on his 106th birthday in 1956.
The family decided against having a celebratory party for Woolson's 106th (claimed 109th) birthday on February 11, 1956, even as doctors were startled by his quick recovery (he gained back most of the weight he had lost), but he did receive a congratulatory telegram from President Eisenhower on February 10, along with mail from friends and fans consisting of "11 large bundles of greeting cards, a big ham, a fresh supply of cigars, and a crate of apples." Additionally, he received a congratulatory letter from Salling (dictated, presumably, given that Salling was illiterate), who Woolson considered a friend.
Woolson's lung condition recurred in May, and he returned to the hospital for a few weeks, before being released on the 26th. However, four days later, he was brought back, although doctors said he was in "no immediate danger."
However, his condition worsened over the next few weeks. He was put on oxygen in late July, and on July 28th he slipped into a coma from which he never awoke.
On August 2, 1956, at 9:45 AM Central Standard Time at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, Albert Henry Woolson, the last surviving Union veteran of the American Civil War, passed away at the age of 106. He was survived by eight children by two wives - Fannie, Adelaide, Albert, Josephine, Robert, Myrtle, Frances, and Gertrude. The last of them, Frances, died in 2008 at the age of 99.
People across the nation mourned. A memorial was built in Gettysburg. John Salling said upon hearing the news that "Albert has gone to rest and I hope someday to meet him across the great river." President Eisenhower stated "The American people have lost the last personal link with the Union Army ... His passing brings sorrow to the hearts of all of us who cherished the memory of the brave men on both sides of the War Between the States."
Albert Woolson was buried, with full military honors, at Park Hill Cemetery in Duluth. He shares a tombstone with his second wife Anna and their daughter Gertrude Kobus, who died in 1998.