Last Civil War Widow Dies at 101
The Civil War ended in 1865. How is this possible?
The Associated Press reports that 101-year-old Helen Viola Jackson of Marshfield, Missouri married a man named James Bolin in 1936. She was 17, and he was 93.
According to Jackson, she and her husband did not live together and were never intimate. He married her so that she would receive his pension after he died. It was meant to repay her kindness for helping care for him in his old age.
Bolin served on the Union side of the war as part of the 14th Missouri Cavalry. Jackson never told anyone of her wedding to Bolin - not even her own family.