About eight years ago I placed my two sons Joshua and Justice on the lap of an elderly woman sitting in my living room in Virginia and asked her to tell my sons what it was like for her husband to serve under General Robert E. Lee in the battle of Petersburg. The woman was Mrs. Alberta Martin. She was the last living Confederate widow. She died yesterday, Memorial Day, at the age of 98. Her death is the close of a remarkable link to America’s past.

The occasion for Mrs. Martin’s visit to my home was that she was on her way to Gettysburg battlefield to have a special ceremonial meeting (heralded on the covers of newspapers across America) as the meeting between the last living Confederate widow, and the last living Union widow (who died in 2003 at the age of 97). On the occasion of her visit to our home, we enjoyed receiving a special Confederate re-enactors color guard detachment. It was quite an event.

At the age of 21, Mrs. Martin, then a young widow, developed a friendship with an 81-year-old neighbor. They were married on Dec. 10, 1927, and 10 months later had a son, William.

When we asked her about the war, she said her husband never talked much about it, except for some real difficulties he experienced during the harsh Petersburg campaign.

One paper reported a similar conversation to the one we had with her where she told us: “He’d say it was rough, how the trenches were full of water. They were so hungry in Virginia that during the time they were fighting, they had to grab food as they went along. They came across a potato patch and made up some mashed potatoes.”

Until her death, Mrs. Martin continued to receive a pension from the State of Alabama as a Confederate war widow.