Amazing video of Albert Woolson. He died August 2, 1956 and was over 100 years old. Most claim he was 109 years old. Interestingly enough, his father was a Union soldier who died of wounds received at the Battle of Shiloh. After that Albert enlisted as a drummer boy at age 17. Albert was proud of his service to President Lincoln and his country. He was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic. Upon his death, the Grand Army of the Republic ceased to be-leading the way for the formation of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War which is the legal heir to the GAR.
Outlasted 2,200,000
Mr. Woolson was the sole offi-
cially listed survivor of the
more than 2,200,000 men of the
Union armed forces. He also was
the last survivor of the Grand
Army of the Republic, an organi-
zation of Union veterans that
exerted wide influence in Amer-
ican politics for many years
after the Civil War.
Mr. Woolson’s great age car-
ried him into what was virtually
another world of warfare as well
as of politics. As a boy, he could
have spoken with venerable men
who had fought in the Revolu-
tionary War. Veterans of the
War of 1812 were numerous in
his youth. When the war in
which he served began in 1861,
the commanding general of the
Army was Winfield Scott, a
hero of the War of 1812.
The War with Mexico started
in 1846, the year before Mr.
Woolson was born. Last year,
when he was 108, several de-
pendents of veterans of that con-
flict still were receiving Govern-
ment benefits.
This year, Mr. Woolson could
include himself among the more
than 19,000,000 living persons
who had served in the United
States armed forces. Of these,
as of May 2, 2,715.896 were
receiving cash compensation or
pension payments from the Gov-
ernment. This included some but
not all of the 826,657 former
members of the armed forces
receiving education benefits.
Mr. Woolson, who had been
a bugler-drummer rather than a
rifleman, might have been ex-
cused if, in his later years, he
had only a passing interest in
the progress made in the art of
war between the period of his
Civil War service and the middle
of the twentieth century. In 1865
the most expert rifleman could
kill no more than two or
three persons in a minute. In
1945, when Mr. Woolson was in
his nineties, an estimated total
of 100,000 persons were killed
by atomic bombs.
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