Description
Fort Dodge—Although she is almost 90 years old, Mrs. Caroline Bolton making her home at the state soldiers’ home is reading the papers daily, reading every line of the war news.
“I keep track of where the boys are,” she explained, "This is my fourth war, and I’ve had men in every one of them."
Born a slave on a plantation in Platte County, Missouri, in 1854, her husband was a soldier in the Union army in the Civil War; a son fought in a Negro regiment in Cuba in the Spanish War, another son was a soldier in World War 1, and a grandson is now in the army in this war, the fourth war she has experienced.
Only now, she laments, she is too old to do much in the way of keeping the home fires burning for she was 89 years old this week, Wednesday being her birthday (October 7, 1844).
"I was 6 years old when I was sold as a slave in Missouri, and that was in the Civil War,” she said. “I can remember that war only I was a little girl then.”
The Civil war soldier she married was considerably older than she, the wedding taking place after the war. In fact, he was her 2nd husband. She has been married 3 times, the last husband dying 21 years ago.
She said the records of her birth wore destroyed at a Missouri town when it was burned during the Civil War. She had come io Kansas when the slaves were freed, and lived al Atchison for years.
She went to the Mother Bickerdyke Home at Ellsworth in 1920, and a year later came to the state home here. For the past year she has been an invalid at the hospital here.
(Researcher’s note: The Mother Bickerdyke Home and Hospital was a residential facility established in Ellsworth, Kansas, for the wives, mothers, widows, and daughters of Civil War veterans.)Date(s) of Creation
10/9/1943
