标题: The Civil War’s Last Pensioner [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 5-12-2014 15:48 标题: The Civil War’s Last Pensioner Michael M Phillips, The Civil War’s Last Pensioner: Enduring Cost. Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2014 (front page).
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579493830954152394
Quote:
“Each month, Irene Triplett collects $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a pension payment for her father's military service—in the Civil War. * * * Pvt Mose Triplett joined the rebels, deserted on the road to Gettysburg, defected to the Union and married so late in life to a woman so young that their daughter Irene is today 84 years old—and the last child of any Civil War veteran still on the VA benefits rolls.
“The last US World War I veteran died in 2011. But 4,038 widows, sons and daughters get monthly VA pension or other payments. * * * Spouses, parents and children of deceased veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan received $6.7 billion in the 2013 fiscal year that ended Sept 30[, 2013]. Payments are based on financial need, any disabilities, and whether the veteran's death was tied to military service. Those payments don't include the costs of fighting [the wars] or caring for the veterans themselves.
Note:
(a) Survivors Pension. Veterans Benefits Administration, US DEpartment of Veterans Affairs, undated.
benefits.va.gov/pension/spousepen.asp
(b)
(i) Wilkesboro, North Carolina
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkesboro,_North_Carolina
(a town in and the county seat of Wilkes County)
(ii) Wilkes County (1777). North Carolina Hisotry Project, undated www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/585/entry
(“Wilkesboro, established in 1847, is the county seat, and both the seat and county take its name from John Wilkes, a [UK] Parliament leader who supported American independence”)
(c) “Eric Shinseki, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, often cites President Abraham Lincoln's call, in his second inaugural address, for Americans ‘to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.’"
bear (vt): "to accept or allow oneself to be subjected to especially without giving way <couldn't bear the pain> <I can't bear seeing you cry>" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bear
(d) Pvt Mose Triplett was born in 1846 and joined the Confederate army when 16, in 1862. “In January 1863, Pvt Triplett transferred to the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. The regiment's farmers, tradesmen and mountain men were commanded by 20-year-old Col Henry Burgwyn, Jr, a strict drillmaster educated at the Virginia Military Institute, according to David McGee's regimental history. Col Burgwyn's martinet ways alienated his men at first.”
(i) Virginia Military Institute
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Military_Institute
(a state-supported military college in Lexington, Virginia, the oldest such [“such” means ‘state-supported.” See (B) below] institution in the United States (founded in 1839))
(A) United States Military Academy at West Point, New York was established in 1802.
(B) United States Senior Military College
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senior_Military_College
(Norwich University [the oldest private military college in the United States; established 1819]; The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina [state-supported; founded in 1842])
(ii) drillmaster (n) www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drillmaster
(iii) martinet (n; Jean Martinet): www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martinet
(e) “The [Triplet’s] regiment spent months sparring with Federal forces. In June 1863, the men were posted outside Fredericksburg, Va, trading artillery rounds with Union troops across the Rappahannock River. On June 15, the North Carolinians began the long march through the Shenandoah River Valley, across a slice of Maryland and into Gettysburg, Pa. Gen Robert E Lee intended to give the North a taste of the war, fought so far mostly on Southern soil. * * * Pvt Triplett * * * ‘deserted on June 26, 1863,’ [North Carolina] state records say. He missed a terrible battle for his regiment, and the South, whose loss at Gettysburg portended its final defeat. Of the regiment's 800 men who fought at Gettysburg, 734 were killed, wounded or captured. There was a strong strain of Union sympathy in western North Carolina. Friendly locals often helped hide Confederate deserters. Pvt Triplett crossed the mountains to Knoxville, Tenn, where on Aug 1, 1864, he joined a Union regiment, the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. * * * ‘He served his time out with the Union so he would get a pension,’ said Pvt Triplett's grandson, Charlie Triplett, of North Wilkesboro, NC. * * * records suggest Pvt Triplett eventually secured a Union pension of unknown size.”
(i) Fredericksburg, Virginia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredericksburg,_Virginia
(a city; Located 49 miles (79 km) south of Washington, DC and 58 miles (93 km) north of Richmond; on the Rappahannock River; Named for Frederick, Prince of Wales [1707-1751, who died before his father did and thus Frederick’s eldest son, as George III, succeeded George II], son of King George II)
(ii) Rappahannock River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rappahannock_River
(section 3 History: name)
(iii) Shenandoah River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenandoah_River
(a tributary of the Potomac River)
“The word Shenandoah is of unknown Native American origin.” Wikipedia under the heading of Shenandoah Valley.
(iv) Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg [named after one Getty])
(v) American Civil War (Apr 12, 1861-May 10, 1865)作者: choi 时间: 5-12-2014 15:48
(continued)
(f) “He [Pvt Triplett] wore a Wyatt Earp mustache and would pull the fangs from rattlesnakes, then keep them as pets in a chicken coop. * * * After [first wife] Mary Triplett's death in the 1920s, Pvt Triplett married Elida Hall [in 1924], nearly 50 years his junior. She was a distant relation of Thomas Dula, whose 1868 hanging for his girlfriend's murder was recounted in the folk song ‘Tom Dooley,’ which was made popular by the Kingston Trio in a 1958 recording. * * * Many of the [May-December] marriages took place during the Great Depression, when veterans' pensions offered some financial security. About a third of the wives were nurses, offering security for aged veterans, as well, according to Mr [Civil War researcher Jay] Hoar. * * * [Elida Hall] was mentally disabled * * * [their daughter] Irene was born in 1930 when her father was age 83 and her mother 34. Irene, too, suffered from mental disabilities * * * Pvt Triplett was just shy of his 87th birthday when Elida gave birth to a son, Everette, later the father of Charlie Triplett.”
(i) Wyatt Earp
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp
(1848 – 1929)
(A) The English surname Wyatt is ultimately “derives from the Old English personal name Wigheard, composed of the elements wig ‘war’ + heard ‘hardy’, ‘brave’, ‘strong’. Under Norman influence it was also adopted as a diminutive of both Guy and William.”
(B) The English surname Earp is “from Old English earp ‘swarthy.’”
(ii) Tom Dula
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Dula
(1845-1868; the murder of his fiancée happened in Wilkes County, North Carolina, about May 25, 1866)
(g) "’I dipped snuff in school, and I chewed tobacco in school,’ said Ms [Irene] Triplett, who lives in a nursing home in Wilkesboro. ‘I raised homemade tobacco. I chewed that, too. I chewed it all.’ Irene said her teachers beat her with an oak paddle. Her parents continued the beatings at home, she said: ‘When you got a whooping in school you'd be getting tore up when you got back in those mountains.’ * * * Pvt Triplett died of cancer days after returning from Gettysburg [reunion], at age 92. His family put pennies on his eyes and buried him on a hillside covered in holly, pine, oak and cedar. In Wilkes County, the local Sons of Confederate Veterans of the Civil War put Confederate flags on tombstones of rebel soldiers. Mose Triplett's granite grave marker has no flag and is conspicuous in its neutrality. ‘He was a Civil War soldier,’ it reads.”
(i) snuff (n): "a preparation of pulverized tobacco to be inhaled through the nostrils, chewed, or placed against the gums” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snuff
(ii) dipping tobacco
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipping_tobacco
(iii) To whoop one’s ass or
ass whooping www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ass%20whooping
(iv) “His family put pennies on his eyes and buried him”
Charon (mythology)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(mythology)
(A coin to pay Charon for passage * * * was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person [footnote 1 says, "Not on the eyes; all literary sources specify the mouth”])
Due to its Greek etymology, the letters “ch” are pronounced “k.”