The Last Man Standing
By Jane Malone
Albert Woolson enlisted in Company C of the 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery on October 10, 1864. He was only 14 years old but said he was 17. He’d hoped to be a rifleman. Instead, Albert was assigned the job of bugler and drummer boy. Company C never saw action, and Albert was discharged on September 7, 1865.
Albert was not in the Army, let alone in Gettysburg in 1863. So, why is there a statue of him on the Gettysburg battlefield?
Albert was one of the three million men who were part of the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. After his discharge, he went on with his life as the nation struggled to heal its wounded men and its civil wounds.
Albert was the last living veteran from both armies.
Born in Antwerp, New York, in 1850, Albert was the son of Willard and Caroline Woolson. Willard supported his family by carpentry, but his love was music. When local musicians enlisted in the Union Army in 1862, Willard enlisted with them. On May 13, 1862, Willard was seriously injured in an accident on the Gladiator steamboat on the Tennessee River and was discharged from the army that July. Perhaps it was his father’s inability to work that prompted Albert to enlist in October 1864. His unit was assigned to garrison duty in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and his pay was $16 a month.
When Albert was discharged in September 1865, he returned to his family in Mankato, Minnesota. There, he worked in a furniture factory and later an electric plant. He also taught mechanical engineering and music at the Breck School in Wilder, Minnesota. He moved to Duluth, Minnesota, in 1903. Albert was married twice and was father to 14 children.
In Duluth, he joined—and became a leader—in the local Grand Army of the Republic. He worked for decades to ensure that the sacrifices made by the men of the Union Army would not be forgotten. He marched in local parades and became a leader in the state organization. As the numbers of veterans dwindled, Albert was seen more, first at state and then national events. In 1949, in his 90s, he and a fellow drummer boy, Frank Mayer, marched at the Memorial Day Parade in New York City and laid a wreath at the tomb of Gen. U.S. Grant. Albert routinely spoke at local schools to tell his story, the story of Abraham Lincoln and the freeing of the slaves. He spoke for his fellow soldiers. He said many times, “We were fighting our brothers. In that there was no glory.”
His obituary in The New York Times read, in part: “Mr. Woolson fought in no Civil War battles, although he drummed to their graves many who had … He recalled himself as a drummer boy of 17, in a rakish blue forage cap in the precise line of drummers who beat out the resonant slow step on muffled drums, or thudded the quick step. ‘We went along with a burying detail. Going out we played proper sad music, but coming back we kinda hit it up. Once a woman came to the road and asked what kind of music that was to bury somebody. I told her that we had taken care of the dead and that now we were cheering up the living.’” In his work with the Grand Army of the Republic, Albert did just that. He honored the dead and supported the living veterans until he died. As the last man standing, he became a symbol for all the veterans, Union and Confederate.
Albert died on August 2, 1956, at the age of 106. He was buried with full military honors for his service in Duluth.
Jane Malone is a retired teacher, retired Licensed Town Guide, and an active student of Adams County history.
