Old soldiers ... fade away Two Civil War veterans from NNY lived to tell the tale well into 20th century

John Hunter said he was ready to die. One of the last two Civil War veterans residing in Jefferson County was observing his 102nd birthday in July 1936 at his Roberts Corners home in the town of Henderson.

"When a man gets to be my age, life becomes a burden to him," he told a Watertown Daily Times reporter. "This will be my last birthday. I don't expect to go anywhere this summer because my heart is getting weaker."

He fooled himself. Come Election Day in November 1940, at age 106, he was keeping alive his perfect record of casting a ballot in presidential elections, dating back to the 1856 campaign, when Democrat James Buchanan was elected.

The staunch Republican proudly disclosed his vote for Wendell Willkie, and again he made a prediction. This, he said, would probably be the last time he would vote in a presidential election.

It was a pretty safe prediction, since he'd have to live to be 110. And this time, he was right. On May 17, 1942, about 19 months after he saw his candidate go down in defeat, he surrendered the distinction of being New York's oldest Civil War veteran. He was 107.

In Antwerp, meanwhile, the county still had a survivor of the war between the states — 95-year-old Samuel G. VanPelt. He would live to see three more birthdays.

It was 150 years ago, on April 12 and 13, 1861, that an assault upon Fort Sumter, near Charleston, S.C., triggered the war fought to preserve the Union. A year later, John Hunter signed up, bringing his sailing experience to Abraham Lincoln's Navy. In the second year of the conflict, a teenager from Carthage, Sam VanPelt, left home to join the cavalry. Hunter would see battle against an ironclad, and VanPelt would be at Appomatox, Va., when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered.

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John Hunter had a couple of warriors in his family background when he was born on July 14, 1834. His father, Elijah, had served under Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson in the United States' unsuccessful campaign along the St. Lawrence River during the War of 1812. His maternal grandfather was a colonel under Gen. George Washington's command during the Revolutionary War.

Despite their American roots, Elijah and Easter Youngs Hunter moved to Canada, where John was born in Violet, Ontario. He was just a young boy when his mother died, and at age 7 he was bound out by his father to serve on a lumber vessel.

Crusty seamen likely called him "horse boy," since that was his first job on a timber schooner operated between Bay of Quinte and Oswego. He rode a horse that hauled a device to direct a line of hewed timber being either loaded or off-loaded. After he had a year or so under his belt, he became a "sailor boy" aboard lake vessels. His immediate future was set, with his next several years committed to sailing the Great Lakes and becoming familiar with all the ports from Sackets Harbor to Duluth, Minn.

Testing different waters, he eventually became second officer aboard a supply ship that sailed between Philadephia, Pa., and New Orleans. That was his role when the Union and the Confederacy began exchanging gunfire. At New Orleans in 1862, the 28-year-old sailor enlisted in the Union Navy.

"My entire stay in southern waters was spent on Navy boats chasing blockade runners," he said in one of several interviews.

In a fleet commanded by Adm. David G. Farragut, he was assigned to a wooden screw sloop-of-war, the USS Monongahela, and was aboard for the naval battle of Mobile Bay, Ala., on Aug. 5, 1864.

"I was one of the sailors that poured shot into the hull of the Tennessee," a Confederate ironclad, twin of the Merrimac, he told a reporter. With its sloping roof-shaped deck of railroad iron, the craft readily repelled 40-pound shots.

He said the Monongahela, equipped with a long steel prow for ramming, rushed the Tennessee. As the gunboat sheered past, Mr. Hunter was one of the gunners who poured a broadside of shot into the side of the craft where timbers below the railroad iron had become exposed.

A moment later, a monitor (a small federal warship) shot away wheel chains at the rudder head, and the Tennessee lay helpless with smoke pouring from its hatches. He recalled how the crew of the captured ship scrambled out and deserted her, and the Tennessee became a prize of the Monongahela.

His boat also was sent to help break through defenses at Vicksburg. The Monongahela, which was a steamer converted to a gunboat, was hit by a Confederate shot through the paddle wheel and was compelled to turn back and retire from battle.

"I was aboard the Monongahela when our rudder was destroyed. We drifted out of the range of the fighting and repaired her. After we returned to the rest of the squadron, we succeeded in getting by the enemy forts, and we opened the bay."

After the victory, he was transferred to the West Gulf squadron.

"This group of ships was stationed in the vicinity of Galveston, Texas," Mr. Hunter said. "It was during this time that the Spanish brig, the Echo, was captured. This was a sleek vessel used in running cotton out of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico. The cotton was destined for Europe."

He said he participated in the capture of a number of cotton boats.

With three years of war behind him, he was discharged Aug. 11, 1865, at Philadelphia. He traveled to Henderson, married Mary Jane Peters in 1866, and went back to his old life, spending the next 18 years as a Great Lakes seaman.

As he entered the second half-century of his life, he became a landlubber, settling in 1883 on a small farm at Roberts Corners, where he built a home.

Mary Jane Hunter died in 1901, and the old sailor soon married Susan Kellar David of Adams Center. She lived to be 95, dying in 1929.

The dutiful John Hunter birthday watch by local newspapers appears to have begun shortly before he hit the century mark. In the dead of winter, 1934, his 100th celebration six months away, a Watertown Daily Times story reported that the war veteran walked a couple of miles, then upon returning home offered to chop some wood. No way, said his son John.

"I can saw wood just as well as you can," he protested to his 55-year-old son.

At 103, he was still pulling mustard plants from a corn patch on his farm.

In an interview prior to his 104th birthday, he offered his view about world events of the day.

The nation was "paralyzed by capital," he said, explaining, "we have too many grab-alls who have all the money and can tell the rest of the people what to do."

Despite that impression, he felt that labor unions were "riding too high," and that employers "should have the right to kick out a man if he can't do the work without all the rest of the workers going on strike."

And war was brewing in Europe.

"Trouble with airplanes is that they fly over cities and drop bombs and kill a lot of women and children, like they're doing in Spain. I think planes ought to be outlawed."

Just a couple weeks after his 105th, his eyesight having deserted him, Mr. Hunter was participating in a historical event, the July 1939 dedication of the Thousand Islands bridges. A Toronto radio station interviewed him atop the Canadian span.

Then came that 1940 election, when the Republican lost his vote with Willkie. If he always voted by his party line, he helped send Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover to the White House.

He witnessed the election of four Democrats: Buchanan, Cleveland, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

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Veterans of the blue and gray uniform were invited to attend the 75th anniversary observance of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1938, and John Hunter received his invitation. He didn't go.

"I'd like to have gone first rate, but I can't stand long trips in the auto," he explained.

But the gentleman from Antwerp, Samuel Graves VanPelt, who was approaching his 92nd birthday, made the trip. Escorted on the all-expenses-paid journey by his grandnephew from Watertown, L. Wadsworth VanPelt, he didn't get to see the main speaker, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"We felt it was too much of a job in the hot weather to get through the crowd," Samuel told the Times upon his return. But he mentioned having made a friendly acquaintance with a former Confederate cavalry captain, Robert E. Miles, 98.

Wadsworth VanPelt told a reporter he was impressed "by the spirit of courage and determination shown by those veterans, some of them in wheelchairs and hardly able to move. It was a great lesson for any of the younger people who were there to learn."

Samuel VanPelt didn't serve at Gettysburg. Actually, he didn't become a soldier until about a month after the battle.

Mr. VanPelt was apparently one of those old soldiers who didn't care to discuss his war experiences. What is known is that he was 17, working at a butter tub factory in Carthage when he enlisted in the Union Army on Aug. 6, 1863. He was assigned to Company E, 20th New York Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, and served nearly two years.

The regiment was with defense forces in the Army of the James River and later with the 10th Army Corps, seeing action in several battles in Virginia.

After the war, Mr. VanPelt was involved in the construction of the Utica & Black River Railway and later worked at the M.P. Mason woodworking shop in Carthage. He eventually took up farming near Copenhagen, where his wife of 31 years, Ruth Fogg VanPelt, died in May 1905.

He married Martha E. Payne of Copenhagen in December 1906, and after completing his 23 years of farming, the couple moved to Antwerp. Mrs. VanPelt was among survivors when he died at age 98 in November 1944.

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The last surviving Union soldier was also a Jefferson County man, although he was living in Duluth, Minn. Albert Woolson was 109 when he died on Aug. 2, 1956. He was featured in a Times Gone By column that appeared July 22, 2001.

Three Confederates died after Mr. Woolson, the last of whom, Walter W. Williams, was 116 when he died in 1959 in Franklin, Texas.

Mr. Miles, Mr. VanPelt's acquaintance at Gettysburg, lived to be 102. His war experience included the Battle of Antietam.

The book "Whispers From the Past," written by Harold I. Sanderson, was a reference for this story. Robert Hutchinson, Rodman, drew our attention to John Hunter. Lisa Carr, Times librarian, assisted with research.