Confederate Widows Pensions

50 years after Gettysburg, one-armed vets became friends

Except for the day they tried to kill each other, the two old men didn't have much in common.

A homesteading postmaster from Nebraska. A school-teaching tax collector from Georgia.

They found each other when they returned to Gettysburg 50 years after the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The three-day fight -- which started 148 years ago this weekend -- left more than 50,000 casualities and turned the southern Pennsylvania town into a graveyard.

The Nebraskan and the Georgian had survived. Barely. And now they were among tens of thousands of Civil War veterans gathered at the battlefield for several days of reminiscing, reuniting and the blurring of blue and gray.

President Woodrow Wilson addressed the vets July 4, 1913: "We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten -- except that we shall not forget the splendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasping hands and smiling into each other's eyes."

At some point during the reunion, the Nebraskan met the Georgian. They posed for a photo, two dark suits, a sea of canvas tents behind them.

And they learned they had something else in common -- something that made the story about the gifts they gave each other symbolic and symmetrical.

* * *

Matt Piersol was searching for an obituary at the Nebraska State Historical Society when he stumbled onto the story of Charles Phillips and Isaac Newton Nash.

"Quite often that's the way it works," the research assistant said. "You happen upon something, and upon investigation, it leads to more and better discoveries."

He learned Phillips was born in Pennsylvania in 1843, the great-grandson of a Revolutionary soldier. He was 19 when he joined his father and brother in the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

He was the only one who came home alive.

But he almost didn't. On July 1, 1863, the first day of the Gettysburg battle, the future Nebraskan was shot in the face and arm.

For three days, he lay wounded on the battlefield as men fell around him. A Confederate surgeon would later amputate his right arm.

In 1871, he and his wife, Rosana, began a two-month journey west in a covered wagon, ending up in Fillmore County with $10 to their name. They built a sod house, broke ground on their homestead and learned to farm on the Plains -- with its blizzards, grasshoppers and floods.

Ancestrally Challenged: Analysis of Confederate Widow's Pension ...

The first page has the front piece of what appears to be a brochure-like package. On it we learn that she was living in Pierce County and the widow of Roland Sweat. Her application was approved on 17 March 1897 and the warrant issued two days later.Also on the first page is a power of attorney. It appears she granted William A Wright (who was also power of attorney for Roland) power to receive her pension and send it to her. The page is signed, but there is also an x indicated as her mark so it appears she wasn't literate. Page sixteen, the final page, is a letter written to Richard Johnson of Atlanta, GA. The letter is written on the letterhead of JD Summerall, Ordinary of Pierce County, and dated 2 February 1897. The letter explains that the application of Mary Jane Sweat, widow of Roland Sweat, is enclosed. It reminds Mr Johnson that Roland had his own pension prior to his death and urges him to consider the widow's pension favorably as she is in very needy circumstances. It is interesting that the date Mary Jane Riggins Sweat gives as the start of her residence in Pierce County does not match the date given by the ordinary JD Summerall as the start of her residence in Georgia. She states that she has been in Pierce County since 9 March 1857. The ordinary says she has been in Georgia since 15 January 1873. It's possible that the ordinary did not meet Mary Jane until that date, thus that was the first of his knowledge of her residence. Richard Johnson also appeared in Roland Sweat's pension package. He was listed as Secretary of Executive Department, and also served as Roland's power of attorney at one point. On Mary Jane's original application, it lists Richard as Secretary of Executive Department. Mary Jane's later pension applications (recertifications) show John W Lindsey, who is noted as Commissioner of Pensions. It is interesting that the widow's pension goes only through 1907. Mary Jane passed away in 1923. I will have to do some digging to see if her pension stopped in 1907 or continued on until the time of her death.

Smith papers

Women in the American Civil War

Acts passed by the General Assembly of Georgia

Breaking the Heartland, The Civil War in Georgia

Southern families at war, loyalty and conflict in the Civil War South