Irene Triplett, died Sunday in a Wilkesboro, North Carolina, nursing home at the age of 90. She had been paid $73.13 a month from the pension of her father who had fought in the civil war! Department of Veterans Affairs listed her as "a helpless adult child of a veteran," because of some mental issues she had been born with.
Her father was Private Mose Triplett and they could make a movie about this guy! He initially fought for the Confederacy but an illness en route to Gettysburg left him in a Virginia hospital. Of the 800 men from his unit who went on to Gettysburg, 734 were killed, wounded, or captured.
He left the hospital and became a deserter.
He then went to Tennessee, and met a troop of Union soldiers and decided to join the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. In 1880 he married and had a family. He was widowed in 1920 and in 1924, at the age of 83, he married Elida Hall, who was 28! Six years later they had baby Irene!
According to this site Mose died in 1938 at 92 when Irene was 3.
In the photo below Mose is shown with his first wife Mary and their children.