Walter Williams

Deceased Person

1842 – 1959

10

Who was Walter Williams?

Walter Williams, falsely claimed to be an American Confederate soldier born in 1842 and the last surviving veteran of the American Civil War.

Born in Itawamba County, Mississippi, he claimed to have served under General John Bell Hood. He said he had been a foragemaster in Hood's Brigade and Quantrill's Raiders. Since John Salling and all the other "last claimants" were dead, Williams was celebrated as the "last Confederate veteran." When he died in 1959 in Houston, Texas, at the reported age of 117, Ulysses S. Grant III, chairman of the Civil War Centennial, said the death was an occasion for national mourning.

However, in September 1959, Lowell K. Bridwell revealed that he could not find "one single scrap" of substantiating evidence to back up Williams's age or claims of military service, or anyone else's for that matter. Moreover, the 1860 census listed Walter as age 5 in June 1860, suggesting that he was born in November 1854.

When he died December 19, 1959, according to his New York Times obituary, "a newspaper story said a check had failed to find evidence to support the claim. Back in the times when Williams was born, there was very limited documentation to support birth dates, death dates, etc." Based on Bridwell, he would have been eight years old at the time he said he had joined the Confederate Army, eleven months before the war ended in 1865. It also was reported that the National Archives listed no Walter G. Williams as having served in the Confederate Army from either his home state of Mississippi or from Texas, where his family later settled. Archives at Jackson, Mississippi, however, were said to list a Walter Washington Williams as a private. Mr. Williams said that he had used several different middle initials.

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Born
Nov 14, 1842
Itawamba County
Nationality
  • United States of America
  • Confederate States of America
Died
Dec 19, 1959
Houston

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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