NC resident, last person to receive a Civil War-era pension, dies

The Wall Street Journal has the details:

Irene Triplett, the last person receiving a pension from the U.S. Civil War, has died at the age of 90.

Ms. Triplett’s father, Mose Triplett, started fighting in the war for the Confederacy, but defected to the North in 1863. That decision earned his daughter Irene, the product of a late-in-life marriage to a woman almost 50 years his junior, a pension of $73.13 a month from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Ms. Triplett, who suffered from mental disabilities, qualified for federal financial support as a helpless ((CQ)) adult child of a veteran. She died Sunday from complications following surgery for injuries from a fall, according to the Wilkesboro, N.C., nursing home where she lived.

It’s a fascinating story, 155 years in the making.