I know this is a Missouri Civil War list, but this information should be of interest to anyone interested in the Civil War. The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that the last surviving widow of a Union veteran has died at the age of 93. Mrs. Gertrude Janeway had married John Janeway, 81, in 1927. She was 18 at the time. He had died in 1937 when he was 91. As a Union veteran's widow, she had been receiving a $70 monthly check from the Veterans Administration. The place of her death was a three room log cabin her husband had bought several years after they married. The cabin was apparently located near Blaine, TN. Her death leaves Alberta Martin, 95, of Alabama, as apparently the only surviving widow of a Civil War veteran. Alberta's husband was a veteran of the Confederate Army. One interesting thing is that for many decades after a war ends, the federal government may be paying pensions and thus there may be records of interest to genealogists. The basic reason is that an elderly war veteran may have married a very young woman who then became entitled to a pension upon his death. According to the VA, the last pension related for service in the Revolutionary War was paid in the early 20th century; the last pension related to the War of 1812 in 1946, to the Mexican War in 1962, and now the Civil War, in 2003 (or perhaps 02). Since the federal government didn't pay pensions to Confederate veterans, it appears now the books will be closing on Civil War pensions as well, nearly 140 years after the end of the conflict. Doug Mason