- Joined
- Apr 2, 2005
- Messages
- 14,961
- Reaction score
- 2,152
She was the last American to collect a Civil War pension —$73.13 a month. She just died.
The check arrived every month: $73.13.
Irene Triplett, who lived in a North Carolina nursing home, rarely talked about the source of the money. She was the last American to receive a pension from the Civil War — $877.56 a year from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The jaw-dropping fact that someone in the year 2020 was still earning a Civil War pension was the result of two factors: First, Triplett suffered cognitive impairments, qualifying her for the lifelong pension as a helpless adult child of a veteran. Second, her father, Mose Triplett, who’d served as a private in the Confederate Army before defecting to the Union, was on his second marriage when she was born in 1930. He was just a few weeks away from turning 84.
On Sunday, Irene Triplett died at Accordius Health, a long-term-care facility in Wilkesboro, N.C., at the age of 90. A relative said she’d broken her hip a few days earlier and died of complications. She never married, and her only brother had died in 1996.
The check arrived every month: $73.13.
Irene Triplett, who lived in a North Carolina nursing home, rarely talked about the source of the money. She was the last American to receive a pension from the Civil War — $877.56 a year from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The jaw-dropping fact that someone in the year 2020 was still earning a Civil War pension was the result of two factors: First, Triplett suffered cognitive impairments, qualifying her for the lifelong pension as a helpless adult child of a veteran. Second, her father, Mose Triplett, who’d served as a private in the Confederate Army before defecting to the Union, was on his second marriage when she was born in 1930. He was just a few weeks away from turning 84.
On Sunday, Irene Triplett died at Accordius Health, a long-term-care facility in Wilkesboro, N.C., at the age of 90. A relative said she’d broken her hip a few days earlier and died of complications. She never married, and her only brother had died in 1996.
