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From: Amy Johnson Crow <>
Subject: RE: [APG] "Last Widow of Union Veteran Dies"
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 15:08:23 -0500
In-Reply-To: <455F05E13709F848BCD8D4C50A167021D1030B@cscmail1.csc.cc.il.us>


Michael, thanks for having the link to the article on your site.

If anyone is curious, the Civil War Soldiers System website
http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/ (with the online names index complied from the
Compiled Military Service Records index cards) shows the following:
[note: January was the surname the article said he enlisted under]
John M. January, Co B, 14th Illinois Cavalry, rank in Private, rank out
Corporal, AKA John W. January
John W. January, Co B, 14th Illinois Cavalry, rank in Private, rank out
Corporal
John Janeway, Co E, 14th Illinois Cavalry, rank in Private, rank out Private

I bet his pension file is interesting reading!

Amy


At 02:55 PM 1/20/2003, Michael Neill wrote:
>As a matter of interest, I found what I think is this couple in the 1930
>Census.
>A very cursory (emphasize the word cursory) search did not locate John in
>the 14th Illinois.
>The census images for anyone interested (and citation!) are at:
>http://www.rootdig.com/civilwarwidow/
>Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Mason [mailto:]
> Sent: Mon 1/20/2003 10:04 AM
> To:
> Cc:
> Subject: [APG] "Last Widow of Union Veteran Dies"
>
>
>
> The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that the last surviving
> widow of a
> Union veteran has died at the age of 93. Mrs. Gertrude Janeway
> had married
> John Janeway, 81, in 1927. She was 18 at the time. He had died in
> 1937 when
> he was 91. As a Union veteran's widow, she had been receiving a
> $70 monthly
> check from the Veterans Administration. The place of her death
> was a three
> room log cabin her husband had bought several years after they
> married. The
> cabin was apparently located near Blaine, TN.
>
> Her death leaves Alberta Martin, 95, of Alabama, as apparently
> the only
> surviving widow of a Civil War veteran. Alberta's husband was a
> veteran of
> the Confederate Army.
>
> One interesting thing is that for many decades after a war ends, the
> federal government may be paying pensions and thus there may be
> records of
> interest to genealogists. The basic reason is that an elderly war
> veteran
> may have married a very young woman who then became entitled to a
> pension
> upon his death. According to the VA, the last pension related for
> service
> in the Revolutionary War was paid in the early 20th century; the last
> pension related to the War of 1812 in 1946, to the Mexican War in
> 1962, and
> now the Civil War, in 2003 (or perhaps 02). Since the federal
> government
> didn't pay pensions to Confederate veterans, it appears now the
> books will
> be closing on Civil War pensions as well, nearly 140 years after
> the end of
> the conflict.
>
> Doug Mason

==============================
Amy Johnson Crow, CG
Program Chair, OGS 2003 Conference
"Ohio: 200 Years of Heritage"
24-26 April 2003 at the Columbus Hilton
http://www.ogs.org

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