The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1892-12-28
Owe onAss "a PENsIoNERs.


ONE GLASS or PENSIONERS.
Widow OF the Revelation Veterans.
some Striking Faet,-Yoang Women
Who Marry OLD Men 90 Got Their Pea
s~lopss8tds
RaihagtoR speelai u Baltimore Sun.
Appendedlto the report Of Pension
Commissioners Raum, which has just
been printed, are q couple of tablestha a
throw considerable light on the ques-
ton Of how long the United States must
continue to pay pensions If the present
laws remain in force. One Of these is a
table giving the names OF the twenty
widows OF revolutionary soldiers who
still survive and draw pensions from
athe1eoxAFnIneht. When 1t is considered
I,dhetreHolnIibnary war ended,more than.
Ill years ago it will be seen that these
ladies are open to the suspicion OF be-
long to the class Of young women whom
Representative O'Neill, Of Massachu-
sets, recently told about, who marry
veterans on the brink OF the grave for
theteNpfesspufpose OF securing their
5pensioniatter death. Two Of these pen.
sioners; Nancy Rains, OF Tennessee,
and Annie Maria Young, OF P%ennsylya-
MIA, are put down onsthe lists as being
100 years old. They wero not born until
eleven years after the close OF the war
in whlch.their husbands fought and II
the late Mr. Rains and the late Mr..
Young were twenty years old when the
war closedf they afterwards married
womentoyerit thirty years younger than
themselves. The other cases are all
worse lthan'these, for tho other women
areiall younger. Most OF them are below
ninety, and would thus be more than.
forty years younger than their hus-
bands, assuming that the latter We're
twenty at the close Of the war. The
youngest widow in the lot is Mary
lanGad, Of Virginia, who Is but seventy
FtstUqyeafs Totd, and was therefore not
born untiti1SI6. or thirty-fve %Yearsafter
the war closed, when her future hus-
band was fifty.five or sixty years OF age.
IL she did not marry MIR. Snead until
she was twenty, he was dashing young
bridegroom of some seventy-tive or
eighty years of age at the time. Itshe
|liyes tocbe as old as Anna Maria Young
she will continue to draw a pension
until the year 1915, or 1876 years after
the close Of tie warm which her hua-
band served.
Comparing the relatively small NUM-
Dor of men who participated in the war
Observation-Disclosures with the 2,066,S9l
mem whose. names were carried on the
rolls Of, the Union army during the late
war, aud it will be seen that the PEN
sion roll will be a considerable burden
on the treasury for the next seventy
FIVE years, even If there should be no
more wars in the meantime, and at tho
end of a5century from the present time
the lastSstfa9glers Of the great army of
soldiers widows will still be drawing
theirlquatterly pensions from the gov
eminent. III the war OF the Revolution
can be taken as a precedent, there are
still future hundreds of widows of the
civil war who are being rocked in their
cradles, and widows Of that war will
continue to be born! untilsthe year 1900,
those born in the latter year being on
thesahe basis as Mary Snead was with
regard to the Revolution, and being
destined to, marry about the year 1920
veterans Of seventy-fye or over.
Tie large number OF young women
who marry gray-headed or bald-headed
old veterans, and the prospect that
these marriages will keep up for thirty
years longer, have led q number OF
congressman to suspect that these
young women marry the old fellows
only to get their pensions, andia prop
ositfon to limit the pensions to soldiers
widows who we're actually married be-
fore or during the war has been adyo-
Gated by a number OF Representatives.
That theaveterans themselves will con-
tinueI III the rolls in large numbers for
many years to come is shown by the
fact that there are still los survivors of
the war of 1919 on the pension rolls,
though that war has been over nearly
eighty years. Very few of the men on
this roll are less than n~inety.tive years
old. The youngest is eighty-seven and
the oldest is one hundred aud five.
They are thinning out very fast now,
andin a few years but very few of them
will be left. II the average length Of
life among the veterans of the last war
shall be as great as among those Of the
wal Of 1912 it will be seen that there
will still be quite a number OF the old
fellows on the rolls in the year1940,
though by 1915 they will have practic,
ALLY disappeared. The large number
lof;yonng widows they will leave, how.
ever, can be estimated from the fact
that with the soldiers Of the war Of
1872 disappearing from the rolls there
are still 6,65l widows Of that war draw
ing pensions. This is a striking illus
tration of Mr.. Weller's injunction to
beware Of the widows"