Maudie Hopkins - wikipedia Maudie Hopkins Maudie Hopkins Maudie Hopkins Maudie Cecilia Acklin ( 1914 - 12 - 07 ) December 7, 1914 Baxter County, Arkansas August 17, 2008 ( 2008 - 08 - 17 ) ( aged 93 ) Lexa, Arkansas Nationality American Known for Last known Civil War widow Maudie Hopkins ( December 7, 1914 -- August 17, 2008 ) was an American woman believed to be the last publicly known surviving widow of a Civil War veteran. Contents 1 Life 2 See also 3 References 4 External links Life Born as Maudie Cecilia Acklin in Baxter County, Arkansas, she married William M. Cantrell ( aged 86 ) on February 2, 1934, when she was 19. Cantrell had enlisted in the Confederate States Army at age 16 in Pikeville, Kentucky, and served in General Samuel G. French 's Battalion of Virginia Infantry. He was captured in 1863, and was part of a prisoner exchange. He had a previous wife, who had died in 1929. Cantrell supported her with a pension of US $25 every two or three months, and she inherited his home in 1937. She received no further pension benefits after his death. She remarried later in 1937, and twice thereafter, and had three children. It was not especially uncommon for young women in Arkansas to marry Confederate pensioners ; in 1937 the state passed a law stating that women who married Civil War veterans would not be eligible for a widow 's pension. The law was later changed in 1939 to state that widows born after 1870 were not eligible for pensions. Hopkins generally kept her first marriage a secret, fearing that the resulting gossip ( of marrying a much older man ) would damage her reputation. After researching records from Arkansas and United States Census Bureau data, Hopkins was certified by various historical organizations, most notably the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A spokeswoman for the UDC, Martha Boltz, has said that there may be two other widows, one in Tennessee and another in North Carolina, but if they are still alive, they choose to remain in anonymity. Maudie Hopkins died on August 17, 2008, in a nursing home in Lexa, Arkansas, aged 93. See also Alberta Martin, one of the last known Confederate war widows and the last widow whose marriage to a Confederate soldier produced offspring. She died May 31, 2004. Gertrude Janeway, last known widow of a Union veteran of the Civil War. She died January 17, 2003. References ^ Jump up to : Schlueter, Roger. `` Civil War Soldier 's Widow Lives '', Belleville News - Democrat, August 3, 2008 Jump up ^ Barron, James. `` The ' Last Civil War Widow ' Has a Successor, It Would Seem '', The New York Times, June 16, 2004. Retrieved January 29, 2017. Jump up ^ Hopkins ' obituary in the Washington Times External links Meet Maudie Hopkins CivilWarNews.com Infoplease article : Last Civil War Widows Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Maudie_Hopkins&oldid=799736076 '' Categories : 1914 births 2008 deaths People from Baxter County, Arkansas People from Phillips County, Arkansas Hidden categories : All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from June 2017 Articles with permanently dead external links Articles with hCards Talk Contents About Wikipedia Add links This page was last edited on 9 September 2017, at 15 : 02. About Wikipedia

Question: when did the last civil war veteran widow die
Answer: August 17, 2008