Last Widow of Union Veteran Dies at Age 93

Gertrude Janeway, the last widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, has died in the three-room log cabin where she lived most of her life. She was 93.

Bedridden for years, she died Friday, more than six decades after the passing of the man she called the love of her life, John Janeway, who married her when he was 81 and she was barely 18.

“She was a special person,” said the Rev. Leonard Goins, who officiated at her funeral Sunday. “Gertie, as she was called, had a vision beyond that [cabin] that kept her going. She never had any wavering or doubt in her salvation.”

She was to be buried today near her husband’s slender military tombstone at tiny New Corinth Church cemetery.

An honorary member of the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Janeway was the last recognized Union widow. She received a $70 check each month from the Veterans Administration.

Still alive is Confederate widow Alberta Martin, 95, of Elba, Ala.

Janeway once recalled getting married in the middle of a dirt road in 1927 with family and friends gathered around. Her husband bought her the cabin in 1932 and it was there that he died in 1937, at 91. “After he died, why it just seemed like a part of me went down under the ground with him.”