The last direct link to the Civil War was lost when 93-year-old Henry Jackson died at his home outside Perryville on a cold November day in 1939. As a teenager, he ran away from home to serve in the War, enlisting in the Union Army for three years with Snow’s Battery. After emerging unscathed from the battles at Gettysburg and Antietam, he returned home.
During a long life, the soldier who was growing old watched the ranks of his comrades, men who knew the madness of that time thin. By the early 1930s, just a few old Civil War soldiers around Cecil recalled frightened, brave boys in blue hastily forming ranks to march into harm’s way. The first-hand memories of those years, a time that called for the best from comrades, were rapidly fading, as were the sad thoughts about comrades that fell on bloody, distant battlefields.
For Memorial Day 1938, the County’s two remaining veterans were unable to take up activities. The Morning News wrote: “For the first time in years, Cecil County’s two oldest Civil War veterans, Henry W. Jackson, 92, of Aiken, and Joseph Yocum, 91 of Leeds, were unable to take part in the Memorial Day exercises” in the County.
The last survivor of Snow’s Battery B 1st Maryland Artillery attended the final reunion of Battery B in 1927, according to Find a Grave. On the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1938, Private Jackson participated in the veterans’ reunion, the Midland Journal added.
Joseph T. Yocum, the next to the last of Cecil County’s Civil War Soldiers, died Nov 9, 1938, at his home near Childs. He was 91 but had been blind and deaf for many years. While serving with the 3rd New Jersey Cavalry, he spent most of his active duty during the War in the Shenandoah Valley and was in the Battle of Cedar Creek with Sheridan during his raid in 1864. After the War, he worked at Marley Mills. Private Yocum was buried at the Cherry Hill Cemetery. (Midland Journal, Nov. 18, 1938, and Find a Grave)
Jackson had been born in Craigtown, and he married Elizabeth Ann Pennington of Leslie. They had ten children (eight boys and two girls), five still living in 1938. They were Winfield Scott Jackson of Texas, PA; Earl of Fishing Creek, PA; William of Rising Sun; and Mrs. Samuel Thompson of Perryville (Midland Journal, July 8, 1938).
Seventy-five years after the bloody War staggered to a close, the final Civil War Soldier, Pvt. Jackson, was laid to rest at Asbury Cemetery near Port Deposit in November 1939. He was the last local survivor of that unforgettable time. Private Jackson passed away on November 23. His wife had died in 1918.
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For additional photos see this album about the last two Civil War Soldiers in Facebook
This information about Civil War Soldiers, Henry Jackson and Joseph Yocum, comes from the Mahoney Civil War Inventory of county soldiers at the Historical Society. In the 1960s, the Mahoney file established a register of men from Cecil County who fought in the war.