Albert Henry Woolson
Union Soldier - Distinguished Service
Albert Henry Woolson was born on February 11, 1847 in Antwerp, 22 miles northeast of Watertown, N.Y. His father, Willard Woolson, enlisted in the Union Army in Watertown, NY. Willard was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and was transported to an Army hospital in Windom, Minnesota, where he eventually died of his wounds. Albert and his mother moved to Windom to be with Willard. Albert enlisted in Company C, 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery Regiment on October 10, 1864, as a rifleman, later becoming the company's drummer. The company never saw action, and Albert Woolson was discharged on September 7, 1865. Mr. Woolson died on August 2,1956 in Duluth, MN at 109 years of age.
The Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1953
Only One Left of Civil War's Northern Army
Albert Woolson, 106, to 'Carry On'
Duluth, Minn, March 13 [1953] - Albert Woolson, last survivor of the 2,675,000 men who wore the Union blue in the Civil War, vowed today he would carry on "the highest traditions of Abe Lincoln's forces until the very end."
Woolson became 106 on Feb. 11. Today he said he "feels like a million."
The spry former drummer boy picked up a morning newspaper early today to learn that his only other Union army comrade, 111 year old James A. Hard - had died last night in Rochester, N.Y.
City's Flag at Half-Staff
Woolson was deeply moved and upset at Hard's death. In a clear, but shaking hand, he immediately penned a letter of condolence "To the immediate family and descendants of James Hard, Civil war comrade..."
In Rochester, the city's flag flew at half-staff for Hard. Arrangements were underway for large-scale military rites Monday for the old soldier, whose loyalty to the Republican party carried him to the polls last November in an ambulance.
Woolson brings up the rear guard of the armies of the North which engaged the gray clad Confederates in the Civil war.
He is also the last of the Grand Army of the Republic, which once counted 408,489 members. The G.A.R. held its final encampment in 1949, but will exist, under present plans, until Woolson dies.
Shovels After Snowstorm.
His face deeply lined and his hearing gone, Woolson lives with a son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. John Kobus. His days are filled with letter writing, talking to an occasional tourist who drops in, perhaps a stroll down the block, a cigar, and, after a snowstorm, a little shoveling. Woolson was born in Watertown, N.Y. At 14 he came to Minnesota, where he joined his father - a former circus bandmaster. He enlisted in the 1st Minnesota artillery Oct. 4, 1864, toward the close of the Civil war and was on occupation duty in the south. The oldest Confederate veteran remaining is Walter Williams, 110, of Franklin Tex. Three other Confederates also survive.
The New York Times
August 2, 1956:
Last Union Army Veteran Dies;
Drummer at 17, He Lived to 109
Albert Woolson of Duluth
Also Was Sole Survivor of Grand Army of Republic
DULUTH, Minn., Aug. 2---Albert Woolson, the last member of the Civil War's Union Army,
died today at the age of 109. Mr. Woolson, who answered President Lincoln's call to arms
and marched off to war as a drummer boy when he was 17, had been hospitalized for nine
weeks with a recurring lung congestion condition. He lapsed into a coma early Saturday and did
not regain consciousness. Since then, he had been fed intravenously and received oxygen
through a nasal tube.
Members of his family were at his bedside when he died in St. Luke's Hospital.
Full-scale military funeral services will be conducted at the National Guard Armory here
Monday at 2 P.M. Burial will be in the family lot at Park Hill Cemetery here.
Only three veterans of the Civil War, all members of the Confederate forces, survive. They
are Walter W. Williams, 113, of Franklin, Tex.; John Salling, 110, of Slant, Va.; and William
A. Lundy, 108, of Laurel Hill, Fla. Informed of Mr. Woolson's death, Mr. Lundy said "I regret
very much the passing of Mr. Woolson."
Mr. Woolson's last comrade of the Union Army, James A. Hard of Rochester, N.Y., died in 1953
at the age of 111.
In Washington, President Eisenhower said today the death of Mr. Woolson "brings sorrow to
the hearts" of Americans. The President said: "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."
With Mr. Woolson's death, only the Confederate veterans will get a medal being prepared for the last survivors of the Civil War unless the law is changed or broadly interpreted. Last month Congress passed a law directing the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare gold medals with suitable inscriptions honoring the remaining veterans of the North and South.
Representative John A. Blatnik, Democrat of Minnesota, pushed for a quick award of the decoration to Mr. Woolson when the old soldier became critically ill.
But Mr. Blatnik's office said today the Treasury would be unable to get the medal finished
before Oct. 1. There is no definite provision in the law for a posthumous award.
Mr. Woolson married Sarah Jane Sloper in 1868. She died in 1901. Three years later he
married Anna Haugen, who died in 1948. Survivors include six daughters, Mrs. John Kobus,
Mrs. Arthur Johnson and Mrs. Robert Campbell, all of Duluth; Mrs. Adelaid Wellcome, Mrs. F.
W. Rye and Mrs. J.C. Barrett, all of Seattle, and two sons, Dr. A.H. Woolson of Spokane,
Wash., and R.C. Woolson of Dayton, Wash.
The Kobus family had lived with Mr. Woolson for several years. Mrs. Kobus said late today that instead of floral memorials the family preferred contributions to the Albert Woolson
Scholarship Fund at the Duluth Branch of the University of Minnesota.
------------
Outlasted 2,200,000
Mr. Woolson was the sole officially listed survivor of the more than 2,200,000 men of the
Union armed forces. He also was the last survivor of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans that exerted wide influence in American politics for many years after the Civil War. Mr. Woolson's great age carried him into what was virtually another world of warfare as well as of politics. As a boy, he could have spoken with venerable men who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Veterans of the War of 1812 were numerous in his youth. When the war in which he served began in 1861, the commanding general of the Army was Winfield Scott, a
hero of the War of 1812.
The War with Mexico started in 1846, the year before Mr. Woolson was born. Last year, when he was 108, several dependents of veterans of that conflict still were receiving Government benefits.
This year, Mr. Woolson could include himself among the more than 19,000,000 living persons
who had served in the United States armed forces. Of these, as of May 2, 2,715.896 were
receiving cash compensation or pension payments from the Government. This included some but
not all of the 826,657 former members of the armed forces receiving education benefits.
Mr. Woolson, who had been a bugler-drummer rather than a rifleman, might have been excused if, in his later years, he had only a passing interest in the progress made in the art of war between the period of his Civil War service and the middle of the twentieth century. In 1865 the most expert rifleman could kill no more than two or three persons in a minute. In 1945, when Mr. Woolson was in his nineties, an estimated total of 100,000 persons were killed by atomic bombs.
Civil War Still a Live Topic
In 1956, ninety-one years after Appomattox, popular interest in the war in which Mr. Woolson
had fought showed few signs of diminishing. Biographical studies of Civil War figures from Lincoln down to generals such as "Fighting Joe" Hooker were in bookstores, and a dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body" had been presented successfully on Broadway within a year or two.
Mr. Woolson fought in no Civil War battles, although he drummed to their graves many who had. When he was 106 he remembered it all pretty well.He recalled himself as a drummer boy of 17 in a rakish blue forage cap in the precise line of drummers who beat out the resonant slow step on muffled drums or, again, thudded the quick step--most likely "The Girl I Left Behind Me." "We went along with a burying detail," he said. "Going out we played proper sad music, but coming back we kinda hit it up. Once a woman came onto the road and asked what kind of music that was to bury somebody, I told her that we had taken care of the dead and that now we were cheering up the living."
Mr. Woolson was born in the New York farm hamlet of Antwerp, twenty-two miles northeast of Watertown, on Feb. 11, 1847, the same day Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor, was born. James K. Polk, the dark horse Democrat, was in the White House and the issues that were to bring about the Civil War were being drawn into focus.
Willard Woolson, his father, was a carpenter in Watertown and apprenticed his son to this trade. The senior Woolson had, however, a second vocation. He was a musician in the band of a traveling circus. When President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers in 1861, the father and his fellow musicians enlisted as a body.
Traced Father to Minnesota
When his family did not hear from him for more than a year they traced him through Army records to a hospital in Minnesota. The younger Woolson and his mother undertook the difficult journey by Great Lakes boat and stage coach to Windom, where they found the father suffering from a leg wound received at the battle of Shiloh.
Shortly after the family was reunited his leg had to be amputated and he died.
Mr. Woolson and his mother remained in Windom and the boy went to work as a carpenter.But it was wartime. The sound of drum and bugle was in the air and it was agony for a spirited boy--mostly especially one in the drummer-bugler tradition--not to be in uniform.
Minnesota's manpower was stretched thin to furnish its quota for the Union forces and
at the same time to hold back the Sioux Indians, who went off the reservation in 1863. Mr.
Woolson recalled the day he left for the Army he had seen thirty-eight Sioux hanged in Mankota.
In the South, the war was dragging out its course. It had been a war of maneuver and
field entrenchment, but by 1864 the Confederates were beginning to dig in to save manpower and
the Union needed heavy artillery. Col. William Colville organized a Minnesota heavy artillery regiment of 1,800 men.
Mr. Woolson got his mother's consent and was accepted into Company C, First Minnesota
Volunteer Heavy Artillery. His military service dated from Oct.10, 1864.
Enlisted as a rifleman, he wanted to be assigned as drummer and bugler, but Company C
already had its quota of one field musician.
"I got the job by knocking his block off," Mr. Woolson recalled many years later.
Late in 1864, the regiment joined the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee. It was commanded by Maj. Gen. George H.Thomas, known to history as "The Rock of Chickamauga," but more familiarly to his men as "Pap."
Recalled Firing Cannon
Minnesota's ponderous cannon and their north-country cannoneers waited hopefully at Fort Oglethorpe to be called into action, but the call never came.
Mr. Woolson got to fire a cannon, though. It was the outstanding recollection of his Civil War service. The bored gunners of the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery prepared to fire one of their pieces just to hear the noise. Mr. Woolson recalled it thus: "The colonel handed me the
end of a rope and said: 'When I yell you stand on your toes, open your mouth wide, give a yell
yourself and pull the rope.' I yanked the lanyard and the cannon went off and scared me half
to death."
The First Minnesota sat out the spring and early summer of 1865 in the shadow of Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, and in August the regiment was ordered home. Mr. Woolson received his discharge on Sept. 7, 1865. He again practiced carpentry.
Veterans of both the Union and Confederate armies were returning to their homes or perhaps
seeking new homes in the West. He was but one of thousands returning to civilian life and, in the case of Union veterans, an organization was soon formed that was to make the former wearers of the blue the most potent force in their country's politics for the next twenty years. This organization was the Grand Army of the Republic, of which Mr. Woolson became the last member in 1953. He had been named senior vice commander in chief in 1950. The first G.A.R. post was formed at Decatur, Ill., in April, 1866.
Mr. Woolson was still in his teens when the G.A.R. was founded, and it is probable that,
in common with most of the younger veterans, he did not join it for many years. The G.A.R. had a tinge of the secret society popular in the day. There was an oath and a ritual, and the organization was ostensibly free from politics and dedicated to good works. In a few years, however, it became one of the principal instruments for keeping the Republican party in power and for obtaining pensions and Government job preferences for Union veterans.
The G.A.R., as Mr. Woolson first knew it, was dominated by such figures as Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, a swarthy Illinois politician nicknamed "Black Jack." A gallant and successful general and a thundering orator with a black mane, he never failed to remind his hearers that while "not all Democrats were rebels, all rebels had been Democrats."
Mr. Woolson was a member of the G.A.R. in 1890, when it reached its peak of membership of
408,489. Its political influence had declined in the Eighties, although it was a force to be
reckoned with until the turn of the century.
Mr. Woolson did not receive a pension until 1900. Immediately after the Civil War, pensions
were limited to men who had suffered physical disability, but in time they were extended to
all with recognized Civil War service with the Union forces.
Unsuccessful attempts were made from time to time to obtain Federal payments for Confederate veterans. In the South the states paid small pensions to their Civil War veterans.
At his death, Mr. Woolson was receiving a pension of $135 a month. He was then getting
no other benefits, but was entitled to hospitalization and out-patient care.
In May, records showed that 5,784 widows and children of Union veterans were receiving pensions or payments under special acts of Congress.
Formed Drum Corps
Mr. Woolson and Robert Rhodes, an old friend who had been bandmaster of the Second
Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, formed a drum and bugle corps in 1867. Mr. Woolson beat his old
Civil War drum. "We played fine lively music," he said. "Nothing sad." With the passing of years, the G.A.R.'s, as they came to be called, became older men and finally old men. Their fellow countrymen seemed to recall them only on Memorial Day, which their organization had helped to establish. The National Encampments of the G.A.R., lively and often more or less rowdy affairs in the early days, became quiet get-togethers.
Mr. Woolson and his comrades wore the blue uniform coat and slouch hat of the G.A.R. and
marched in the Memorial Day parades as long as they could. Finally they became very old
men sitting quietly in the sun. There were other veterans of later wars to tell of the deeds
they had done.
Mr. Woolson was one of six Union veterans attending the last National Encampment of
the G.A.R. in Indianapolis in August, 1949. Here these last survivors of the organization
voted to disband it.
With Mr. Woolson's death the Grand Army of the Republic passed out of existence. Its
records will be turned over to the Congressional Library in Washington, and its flags, badges and official seal to the Smithsonian Institution.
In the Nineties, Mr. Woolson moved to Duluth and it was there that he discovered he had a knack for storytelling to supplement his brisk bugle and drum. He would drop into a nearby school, tell a couple of fanciful tales, give a little lecture on thrift and pass out a few bright, new pennies.
In 1952 the children of Duluth's schools turned the tables on him. They collected 27,652 pennies and commissioned an oil portrait of Mr. Woolson that was hung in the City Council chamber.
The aged veteran liked to say that he was born a Republican. He voted for President Lincoln
when he was 17 under a special dispensation that gave the ballot to soldiers. He admitted he
voted for the Democratic ticket once. That was for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first bid for the Presidency. Mr. Woolson did not retire until 1930.
In his later years, Mr. Woolson liked to recite poetry and his favorite poem was "After the
Battle, Mother." And it is unlikely that his school children friends for several generations
let him forget that great sentimental poem of the post-Civil War period, "The Blue and the
Gray," by Frances Niles Finch.
It ends:
"Under the sod and dew,
waiting the judgment day,
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray."
TAPS SOUNDS
for the Grand Army of the Republic
>From the Banner, Fall 1956
The obituary notice of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was written on August 2, 1956. The GAR was born on April 6, 1866, at Decatur, Illinois, and died at Duluth, Minnesota with the passing of its last survivor, 109 year-old Albert Woolson. Comrade Woolson was the sole officially listed survivor of the more than 2,675,000 men of the Union armed forces. He was also the last survivor of the Grand Army of the Republic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson
Albert Henry Woolson (February 11, 1850? - August 2, 1956), was the last surviving member of the Union Army, which fought in the American Civil War. He was also the last surviving Civil War veteran on either side whose status is currently undisputed. (At least three men who followed him in death claimed to be Confederate veterans, but their status as Civil War veterans is in dispute.)
Woolson was born in Antwerp, New York. His father, Willard Woolson, enlisted in the Union Army. Willard was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh and was transported to an Army hospital in Windom, Minnesota, where he eventually died of his wounds. Albert and his mother moved to Windom to accompany Willard. Albert enlisted as a drummer boy in Company C, 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery Regiment on October 10, 1864, becoming the company's drummer. The company never saw action, and Albert Woolson was discharged on September 7, 1865.
Woolson returned to Minnesota, where he lived the rest of his life. He was a carpenter and later a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a powerful political organization made up of Civil War veterans where he became senior vice commander in chief in 1953.
In his final days, he lived at 215 East Fifth Street in Duluth. Woolson died at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota on August 2, 1956, at what was thought to be the age of 109, of a "recurring lung congestion condition." Woolson was buried with full military honors by National Guard Armory and is buried at Park Hill cemetery. Following his death, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "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."
In mid-2006, new census research indicated that Albert Woolson was actually only 106 years old, being listed as less than 1 year old in the 1850 census. Previous research in 1991 has suggested he was younger than claimed, although this does not affect his veteran status.
Albert Woolson (1847-1956), the last living Union veteran of the Civil War, was born in Watertown, New York on February 11, 1847. When he was fifteen, his family moved to Minnesota. In October 1864, he enlisted in the Union army as a volunteer private in Company C of the First Minnesota heavy artillery regiment. He served as a drummer boy in Chattanooga, Tennessee for slightly less than a year.
After his discharge from the army in September 1865, Woolson worked at a variety of jobs, many in the field of engineering. He settled permanently in Duluth, Minnesota in 1905.
He married Sarah Jane Sloper in 1868. Three years after her death in 1901, he married Anna Haugen, who died in 1949. From these two marriages, Woolson had fourteen children. When he died in 1956, six daughters and two sons were still living.
In later years, Woolson gained fame as an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic. He served as Commander of the Minnesota Grand Army of the Republic until it dissolved in 1947. In 1950, he became the Senior Vice Commander in Chief of the National Grand Army of the Republic, and its sole remaining member in 1953.
As Woolson passed his 100th year and veterans of the Civil War became scarce, his birthdays drew national attention, with articles about him in newspapers and cards arriving from all across the country, including letters from U.S. presidents. His celebrity status also put him in the spotlight during Memorial Day celebrations and Civil War commemorations.
The last man standing made Duluth home
By TYLER DOMAAS
DCN Correspondent
"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." - President Dwight Eisenhower
He fought in the Civil War. He lived to the age of 106, and he was officially listed as the last remaining survivor of more than 2,200,000 men of the Union Armed Forces.
He was Albert Henry Woolson.
On Feb. 11, 1847, the world welcomed Woolson. He was born in Antwerp, N.Y., to Willard Woolson. At the age of 17 he joined the fight as a drummer boy for the Union Army. He was never officially in a battle, but drummed at many grave sites. He survived the Civil War and married Sarah Jane Sloper in 1868. Unfortunately she passed away in 1901. Woolson then remarried three years later to Anna Haugen. This marriage lasted until 1948 when she passed away as well.
Leading up to his death, Woolson spent nine weeks in the hospital over a reoccurring collapse of a lung. Eventually Woolson fell into a coma that he never recovered from. He died in St. Luke's Hospital on Aug. 2, 1956. He is buried at Park Hill Cemetery.
My search for Woolson began at Park Hill Cemetery where I managed to stumble across five different sites. They were Anna Hagen, Okerlund, John Nelson, Joahnn Nelson and Albert Woolson. To decide which one of these I would do research on, I decided to type all the names into different search engines to see what would pop up.
Nothing really came up at all for anyone until I typed in Woolson's name. This was a jackpot. He was everywhere and was an important person.
I checked with a couple of Web sites and they gave the same information of his birth date and date of death. I then went into Gen Web to find some information. Through the death index I was able to confirm that this was his death date. Other than that I didn't find Gen Web that helpful in finding information on Woolson.
I then Googled "Albert Woolson and obits" and I came across his obituary that was printed in The New York Times. This gave me the bulk of the information that I used.
http://genealogytrails.com/main/lastveteranobits.html#woolson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson
http://library.morrisville.edu/local_history/sites/gar_post/woolson.html
http://www.suvcw.org/pcinc/woolson.htm
http://www.123exp-biographies.com/t/00034214165/
http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnstloui/slcmndin.htm
This biographical sketch was written for the Research for Reporters class at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Each student in the class went to a cemetery in Duluth, got a name from a grave marker, and then used a variety of primary and secondary sources to find out as much as possible about the person.
Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War website
Albert Woolson was born on February 11, 1847 in Antwerp, 22 miles northeast of Watertown, N.Y. On October 10, 1864 he enlisted in Company C, of the First Minnesota Volunteer Heavy Artillery. He received his discharge on September 7, 1865. Mr. Woolson died on August 2,1956 in Duluth, MN at 109 years of age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Surviving_Veteran
Albert H. Woolson (February 11, 1847-August 2, 1956), was the last surviving member of the Union Army, which fought in the American Civil War. He was also the last surviving Civil War veteran on either side whose status is currently undisputed. (At least two men who followed him in death claimed to be Confederate veterans, but the status of all of these men as Civil War veterans is in dispute). Woolson was born in Antwerp, New York. His father, Willard Woolson, enlisted in the Union Army. Willard was wounded at the battle of Shiloh and was transported to an Army hospital in Windom, Minnesota, where he eventually died of his wounds. Albert and his mother moved to Windom to accompany Willard. Albert enlisted as a rifleman at age 17 in Company C, First Minnesota Volunteer Heavy Artillery on October 10, 1864, becoming the company's drummer. The company never saw action, and Albert Woolson was discharged on September 7, 1865. Woolson returned to Minnesota, where he lived the rest of his life. He was a carpenter and later a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a powerful political organization made up of Civil War veterans where he became senior vice commander in chief in 1953. In his final days, he lived at 215 East Fifth Street in Duluth. Woolson died at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota on August 2, 1956, at the age of 109, of a "recurring lung congestion condition." Woolson was buried with full military honors by National Guard Armory and is buried at Park Hill cemetery. Following his death, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "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."
Sources:
Sources
Newspaper - The Chicago Tribune - March 14, 1953
Newspaper - The New York Times - August 2, 1956:
http://genealogytrails.com/main/lastveteranobits.html#woolson