William Albert Kinney (also known as W.A. Kiney) the Last Verified Combatant in the Civil War By Garry Victor Hill

Introduction: Incredibly the last man to have fought in the Civil War remains in the near obscurity that typified his life. Almost all of those who do know of him believe a 1990s article and a subsequent encyclopaedia entry which states that he was born in 1861, a fraud out to get or getting the Confederate veteran’s pension. In fact he denied he even applied and could not get it on legal grounds if he had. To the best of this writer’s knowledge, no evidence has ever been produced to show this intended defrauding. Two censuses show him being born in the 1840s. Both of his known military enlistments were verified by adjutant-generals and one of these can be seen by anyone going into Official Records online. As he remains best known as a fraud that reputation and how it came about is dealt with first. His real record then follows.

This biography is an abridged excerpt from America’s Last Civil War Participants: An Investigation by Garry Victor Hill. The full and illustrated text can be found for free at my website garryvictorhill.com.au/ Hopefully this will also be an e-book. Twenty eight other claimed Civil War survivors alive after 1951 are also assessed. References to photographs have been kept, they can be viewed in the website version.

Result: His wartime service is verified√

Date of Birth: 10th February 1846 is most likely. Although the same day and month in 1843, 1845 or 1861 are sometimes credited. About 1848 and 1864 are also mentioned, but cannot be.

Date of Death: 23rd June 1953

Age at enlistment: not totally certain, but very probably fifteen

Rank: Private

Unit: Company G 5th Kentucky Mounted Infantry and 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Company D (claimed by others, no documentation evident) and 10th Kentucky Cavalry Company L. from November 1863

Service: Mounted Infantry and Cavalry

Combat Experience: Extensive. He claimed service at Shiloh. The 5th and 2nd Kentucky Cavalry was heavily involved in Morgan’s raids and the war in the western theatre. The 10th focused on raiding in Kentucky. He claimed to have “fout nigh the whole wahwa.”

Length of service: uncertain: enlisted 1st -5th November 1861 for a year. He was at least fighting until after Shiloh in April 1862 and (as above) claimed to have been in most of the war. His second enlistment in November 1863 bears this out.

In Professor Jay S. Hoar’s massive and comprehensive account of the last Confederate veterans The South’s Last Boys in Gray: An Epic Prose Elegy. Volume III (2010) he proved with irrefutable evidence that Kiney was the last fully verifiable combat veteran of the Civil War, and yet this gained little recognition. This writer’s segment here only adds similar primary source evidence to what Professor Hoar found four years before this work began.

Professor Jay S. Hoar has found, compiled, published and explained much about Kiney. My responsibility for finding sources here includes all the census documents except that of 1850, the work record of the ash felt worker, comments on the 1920 marriage certificate, Official Records and 10th Kentucky Cavalry document and history, the work on Morgan’s Raiders and on Little Big Man and the illustrations and captions. All the other evidence presented here comes from Professor Hoar’s entry ‘William Albert Kiney Feb.10th 1846 - June 23rd 1953.’ (pages 1700-1703) The mentioned possibilities are my conclusions.

William A. Kiney initially seems a fraud and for decades that has been the way he has been treated. The case against him initially seems irrefutable, but has been re-examined with crucial evidence against him now irrefutably disproved. This writer, initially a sceptic on Kiney, found that the censuses, seemingly the source of almost all the evidence against Kiney, prove his verification.

To present a summary of the case for fakery first:

Several website contributors and writers state that William A. Kiney faked Confederate service to get the Confederate pension. He claimed to be born on February 10th 1843 but he was really born on February 10th 1861 because two censuses, those of 1900 and 1920 show him living in Louisville and his given age is 59. The census estimates that he was born in about 1861. A March 1920 marriage certificate for William A. Kiney shows him living in Indianapolis and somebody wrote on it that he was born on February 10th 1861. The birthday gives away the connection and shows that they are the same man: therefore this faker has been disproved by three different primary source documents. None of this has been systematically questioned.

It is if only one man named William A. Kiney, William A. Kinney, William Kiney or William Kinney existed in Indiana and Kentucky during Kiney’s lifetime. In fact the 1880 census just for Kentucky alone shows that there were at least eleven born with one of these names between the 1830s and the 1870s. Adding those born with the same name from later censuses taken from within that same time frame gives a very conservative estimate of at least thirty-three men with a name close to or identical to versions of that name. This applies only to those resident in Indiana and Kentucky.

Nobody ever searches for evidence of the supposedly claimed, much mentioned but non-existent pension claim that supplies the motive for fraud. Nobody examines the 1920 wedding documents in detail. There is no mention of the strong and clear proof in two consecutive censuses showing him as born in the middle of the 1840s, or his two enlistment documents or all the links that show that the man who died in June 1953 was a Confederate veteran. Cynics repeat the evidence for fraud but rarely examine, let alone question the documents: they should.

Evidence against service in detail:

William A. Kiney of Indianapolis when filling out his marriage certificate, gave his birth date as February 10th 1861.[1] Detractors have reproduced other information from these 1920 marriage records. These give Kiney’s age as 56, his birth year as 1864 and his birthplace as England. Oddly, amongst the evidence Professor Hoar gives is the fact that Kiney told his granddaughter that he was born in America but conceived in England.

Apart from this apparently damning evidence another problem is that he is a difficult man to trace. He may have filled out a census in 1870. If he did it was his only findable one after childhood. One photo and one newspaper story are all that can be said to exist with certainty on the internet. Several men with slight variations of his name were born in the 1840s in the upper south. Several others migrated from England and Ireland, settling in the mid-west. Official Records lists thirteen Confederates with names that are variations of William Kinney and another is William A.C. Kinney, but none are in the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry. One of these as matching evidence proves, is William Albert Kiney of the 5th Kentucky Cavalry. Apart from Company F, a group of mostly Mississippians who kept “skimpy records” the 2nd Kentucky are believed to have had no muster roll.[2] Kiney’s name does not appear on that company’s roll. So where does that precise information on the tombstone come from?

Assessing the evidence: Dismissing him seems reasonable, and many have. Before doing so consider the duplications in nomenclature and the long coincidences given so far on others. If these factors work against verification with Ross, they work against debunking with Kiney/Kinney. After a platoon of forty named Thomas Ross, four of them being Kentucky cavalrymen, after all the different men who were all Private William M. Loudermilk, two of them Confederate infantry privates with the same middle name and both from Cherokee County; after all the Georgians entitled William J. Bush, after two Confederate Texans being Thomas E. Riddle bearing some physical resemblance, after two couples George and Elizabeth Murray, both in Charleston and after the Witkoski/Witkowski/Mitoski chaos, dismissal on similar nomenclature cannot be easily done. We must consider that the Kinney born in 1861 was someone else or a red herring, but was not the Kentucky cavalryman born in the 1840s. Another consideration is that Kiney, far from forging evidence to make himself seem a Confederate, may well have left a false trail with his enlistment age, his later birthdate and changing the spelling of his name. While honest, he had plausible and traceable reasons for not wanting public attention. Those reasons will be assessed in his war service record.

Evidence for service:

Once again one census contradicts another. The censuses reveal more to suggest different identities and that the 1861 date is wrong. The 1850 census has a William A. Kinney living in Braken County Kentucky, aged four. His parents are listed as Isaac and Jane in the census and they also appear by those names as his parents in a 1991 letter to Professor Hoar by William Kinney’s granddaughter. She had heard their names in Kiney’s reminiscences and apparently did not refer to, or perhaps did not even know of the 1850 census. This makes this clearly the same man.

The 1850 census also names a twin or adopted sister Melisa and six others. In the 1860 census this Kiney family are located in the town of Moultrie, Missouri. They are clearly the same family as that of the 1860 census as Jane and Isaac are the parents. Some of the older children have gone and three born since the 1850 census are added, but William A. Kiney and Melisa are still there, although her name is now spelled Mallissa and their sister, initially named Milden aged 10 in 1850 is (apparently? perhaps?) Milley aged 12 in 1860! Typical census! William A. is now aged twelve as he is now supposedly born about 1848. Despite the usual census errors with ages and spelling this is clearly the same family.

In that same 1860 census, a different Kinney family, from Ireland, reside in Henderson Kentucky. The parents are William R. and Fanny and they have two children Willis J., and Wm. A. This boy was born about a month before the census was taken on June 4. The 1860 census alone shows that they can only be two different people and the different names of both sets of parents makes their movements and careers unambiguous and traceable.

This Irish Kinney family excepting Willis, turn up in Louisville in the 1910 census. The names are the same and as is usual in censuses, the ages do not quite match. The parents being 24 and 25 in 1860 and both are 71 in 1910, but they are still from Ireland and a William A. is on the same page but with other families interposed between him and his perhaps/probable parents. The problem here is that his age is 39, so his birth year is 1871, and this birth year for him is repeated in the 1930 census, with his parents now from Kentucky. Is he their son or is the bachelor lodger, born in about 1861 their son? Are they the same man?

The censuses of the bachelor who lived in Louisville had his parents from Kentucky in one document and one from Kentucky and one from Virginia in another. Did he mean where they were living when he was born? Kiney said his parents migrated from England. Recent computerised census comments state that the Louisville man was also known as William Spivey and also as William Kumey. After seeing the cramped, tiny handwriting these may not really be aliases, just difficult to decipher handwriting. In 1900 he listed his occupation as a farmer: Kiney never claimed to be a farmer. Why should a farmer continually live in a boarding house for decades? While Kiney’s detractors do not mention it, the Louisville lodger also was in the 1910 and 1930 censuses. In all four, from 1900 to 1930 he was a Louisville lodger, a bachelor born about 1861. His last listed occupation was in 1920 and 1930, running a picture show. For three decades he apparently lived and worked in Louisville, while Kiney lived and worked in Indianapolis from 1870 until his retirement in the 1940s. He is not known to have returned to Kentucky even briefly, let alone for the long periods of time needed to farm or run a picture show. In contrast to the Louisville Kinney being a bachelor for decades, Professor Hoar states that the Indianapolis Kiney was married four times. As his son Wallace was born in Iowa in January 1898, he was probably married when the Louisville namesake was still a bachelor. To this writer the issue of a possible marriage in 1920 that shows his supposed real age is a red herring, but as it is often used to clearly disprove his record, it must be assessed.

What remains unclear is that the man who said he was a Confederate veteran is the man with the same name who married in March 1920. Because this marriage has someone named William A. Kiney stating that he was born on February 10th 1861, this supposedly proves that he did not fight in the Civil War. Even accepting that this groom is Kiney, all that this definitely proves is that at the most, he did not tell the truth on a marriage certificate. His enlistment documents and census references prove that like David Story and William Townsend, like thousands of others he altered his age upon enlistment. Mayer, Woolson, William Allen Magee and Bush all said things that cannot be so, yet all these individuals had enough evidence for verification: so does Kiney.

While one of Kiney’s marriages was perhaps in March 1920 and another did come after that, in 1942, he was also a married man in 1932 and probably married during the time between the censuses of 1900 and 1930. In the information Professor Hoar has collected he seems to have lived regularly in Indianapolis apart from visiting family members in Chicago and being in Iowa in 1898. Apart from the name and the 1920 marriage birthdate matching his, all evidence known of at this point clearly proves that the man in Louisville who is supposedly the Confederate faker must be someone else.

Even after stating that, the balance of evidence goes against this 1920 groom being the Civil War veteran. Apart from their errors with birth dates and spellings, the marriage documents do reveal several big and insurmountable differences that block concluding that they are the same man.[3] If he told his granddaughter that his parents were named Isaac and Jane, if descendants say that and the 1850 and 1860 censuses record the same, why are the groom’s parents listed as Mary and G.W. Kiney on the marriage certificate documents?

Was this the man from Louisville marrying in Indianapolis? This already appears unlikely as the parents’ names are different from his as well. What becomes even more unlikely is that the groom is either man when more evidence becomes assessed. In three marriage documents connected to the bride Pauline Dinkins, she is given a wide range of ages from 56 to 59 and her name is misspelled. So how reliable is the groom’s given and differing ages? 1861 or 1864? The documents give us a choice. As mentioned, documents state that the groom was born in England in 1864 when strong evidence shows that W.A. Kiney was born in Kentucky and was an enlisted cavalryman in 1864.

The first reaction to the different names of the groom’s parents from the names of both the Louisville namesake and the Indianapolis Kiney was ‘Why would one of them create fictional parents?’ But they were not. The marriage documents show that these parents of the groom were actual people. They are listed as residents in the same house as the bride and groom. Coaxing or hiring people to pretend to be his parents, in some connection to an approaching wedding, combined with lying about his birthdate and pretending to be English would be far-fetched. This scenario should be filmed from a particularly preposterous locale in sit–com land.

Although the birthdate of February 10th is initially only a one in 365 chance of being coincidence and goes into much higher odds as they are in the same city, coincidence becomes the most plausible explanation after assessing the evidence which is contradictory, strange, mistaken, erroneous and sometimes impossible. Coincidence becomes becomes more plausible when the number of men named William A. Kinney or Kiney or William Kenney are found in Indianapolis, elsewhere in Indiana and in Kentucky. This writer limited himself to those with the first name William without an initial or having the initial A and did not accept those with birthdates below 1857 or over 1875. One who had the 1861 birth year was accepted for this examination with the surname Kine. Only a few were surnamed Kenney and those included were listed because they had some reason that increased their chances of being the man, such as being born in 1861 or being a resident of Indianapolis in the 1920s. I only trawled through the first 500 Indiana or Kentucky located men named Kiney/Kinney/Kenny on the web and found among them thirty-three who could be Kiney within these limitations. Only a few had wives alive during Pauline Dinkins known marriage years of 1920-1940, but the rest were eligible with the largest cluster of birth dates were between 1860 and 1864 and the largest grouping was in Indianapolis.

The ash felt worker and the Louisville lodger were each listed only once although they were listed several times in records. Those who wish to lengthen the odds further and have time to trawl through around half a million listings of Kinneys/Kineys/ Kenneys and related names are welcome.

One of the most enigmatic among those who might be Kiney also listed his birthdate as February 10th but in 1864, not 1861. Employment records from 1925 of this other William A. Kiney of Indianapolis show a man working for the asphalt plant and street repair department. This sounds like the English groom, but as the records show, this man claimed to be born in Kentucky. Another or the same man with the name, who was working in Kentucky as a labourer with tobacco, was born in 1864. This could also be the groom and/or the city road worker Kiney. The photo comparison goes against the idea that this is the Confederate veteran, but that this is the man remains a thin possibility. Ultimately the photographic evidence must be considered inconclusive. W. A Kiney (1846-1953) the veteran was known to change his age for enlistment, so perhaps he changed it to gain employment. His true age would have meant at the best, employment for less than a year as seventy was the usual age for retiring government employees. Was he found out and sacked? His employment badge was redeemed within weeks. This is the evidence against his military record. What is in his favour? A good deal and the evidence is much less convoluted and ambiguous.

The story of his enlistment is familiar: being under-aged, he added the needed years. He was really only fifteen when he was accepted for enlistment on November 5th 1861, supposedly aged eighteen. This would later cause confusion over his real age, getting the mistaken 1843 date into some records. His enlistment was at Pound Gap Virginia and into Company G, Fifth Mounted Infantry captained by James M. Carey with his enlisting officer being Lieutenant R.B. Thomas. As Professor Hoar notes, copies of these enlistment papers have been kept by Kiney’s descendants and the enlistment is also printed up in Kentucky Adjutant General’s Report – Confederate Volunteers 1861-1865 Vol. 1. [4] Kinney’s enlistment appears listed here on page 254 under number 80. In the Official Records in computerised form he is listed as ‘Kinney, William. 5th Regiment, Kentucky Mounted Infantry.’ As two others surnamed Kinney, Henry and Juo W. enlisted in the same company on the same day he was obviously staying close to his male family members. His first battle was probably just three days after being accepted, for the regiment was in the battle of Ivy Creek on November 8th 1861. This regiment was recruited in the mountains of eastern Kentucky and South-West Virginia, where slavery was rare and the isolated local people were fiercely independent and suspicious of the federal government and Abolitionists.[5] These characteristics would lead to a mutiny and a disbanding of the regiment in October 1862, when the troopers refused to retreat from Kentucky with Bragg’s Army, so the unit was disbanded.[6] Their commander gave them a three way choice, honourable discharge, joining another cavalry unit or re-joining a reformed 5th Regimental unit.

Between the disbanding of this 5th regiment and November 1863 Kiney’s whereabouts and service seem unknown. This period could be when he served in the Second Kentucky Cavalry before transferring, for a regimental muster roll shows that on November 18th 1863 he enlisted in Company L of the 10th Kentucky Cavalry as William A. Kiney, interestingly without a designated rank.[7] This unit had been formed in late 1862 and early 1863 by officers wishing to keep the Confederate presence in Kentucky alive.[8] They were nominally still part of Morgan’s cavalry division, but distance and enemy units would have separated them from regular communication. They fought on by raids and skirmishes until disbanding in April 1865.

In a rare or perhaps unprecedented discussion on his war experiences in a 1952 interview he stated that he could not remember much about the war, especially units and their details, but he recalled he was in the Kentucky cavalry. This could easily be forgetfulness after seventy years, but it could also not wanting to remember horrible realities – or have his role in them known, even ninety years on.

Even by Civil War standards. Kentucky during the Civil War was savaged by both sides and by bandits with tenuous ties to either side, if that. Some of these units were outlaw gangs who would attack anyone who came in range: even Morgan’s Raiders suffered their sniping and hit and run attacks in the Cumberland Mountains.[9] The gangs there considered “normal business” to be theft, rape and murder.[10] Some gangs even contained deserters from both sides.[11] Much of Tennessee and much of Kentucky during the war were a paradise for psychopaths, firebugs, sadists and marauders eager to live by plunder.[12] Conditions were so bad in Tennesee that by early 1864 even Nathan Bedford Forrest complained of murder, torture, extortion rackets, and wanton destruction; albeit his report focussed on Union actions and those of Confederate deserters, both of whom he rode against to subdue.[13]

Those forces supposedly committed to protecting Kentucky, both the predominantly Union aligned Home Guards and the predominantly Confederate State militia, were among the worst marauders.[14] Confederate guerrillas prowled the roads looking for civilians to plunder and unarmed civilians would sometimes be summarily executed for suspicion of loyalty to the other side: armed civilians could be killed for possessing weapons.[15] This was in a land where many males used hunting to eke out food supplies.

Morgan himself and his deputy, friend, brother in law and eventual successor, Basil Duke, were not personally like this. Duke warned the notorious Champ Ferguson against killing prisoners and Morgan gave orders not to violate private property.[16]

When an enemy commander, a childhood friend who had surrendered was held accountable for Morgan’s brother’s death, the only punishment Morgan gave was that the Union officer had to inform Morgan’s mother of her son’s death.[17]

Their troops however, were not necessarily the same as their commanders.

They disobeyed Morgan’s restrictions on private property.[18] While not as psychopathically murderous as the worst gangs, Morgan’s raiders were involved in massive destruction, which in the Indiana town of Corydon alone totalled over half a million dollars in 1860s values. [19] The same value was placed on plundered supplies at Tompkinsville, there they took four hundred prisoners, twenty wagons, fifty mules and rifles for all.[20] They also sometimes took ransoms and inflicted some loss of civilian life.[21] One eyewitness to that raid stated that they killed three civilian men defending their homes and she then described them as “a herd of horse thieves.”[22] They also had an impromptu extortion racket going where buildings would not be destroyed upon payment of a substantial fee.[23] A contemporary Union account describes their activities thus:

The lower counties of Kentucky suffered chiefly from their ravages. Property was stolen, outrages of every sort were not infrequently perpetrated upon Union citizens, bridges were burned, and even the friends of the Confederacy did not escape the lust of these desperadoes for plunder. The most successful of these expeditions was one undertaken by John Morgan, the most noted guerrilla leader of the war.

Harper’s Weekly p307.

This is not an exaggeration. Morgan’s great raid left the following casualties and damage and destruction:

34 bridges destroyed.

60 railway locations destroyed.

Assorted warehouses trains, factories, boats, depots, wagons, destroyed.

6,000 Union prisoners were taken and 127,000 militia were mustered to deal with the raid.

Most cyclones are less destructive. Indianapolis during Morgan’s 1863 raid was a centre of resistance: church and fire bells were incessant, while home guards frenziedly prepared as Morgan was expected to raid the city to free its Confederate prisoners.[24] Clearly causing panic, devastation and misery in 1863 meant that former raiders would not be welcome there.

Courage, dash, élan, audacity and stoic loyalty to a losing cause were among the qualities many Kentucky cavalrymen clearly possessed. However their capacity for destruction, havoc, ferocity, cruelty and ruthlessness were equally common. Mercy, forbearance, and justice were rarely evident. What role Kiney had in this horrible world remains unclear. Both the Second Kentucky Cavalry and the reformed Fifth were in Morgan’s raid on Indiana.[25] While it is possible that Kiney was absent, on furlough, suffering sickness or between enlistments during the raid, it is more likely that he was there. From around 1870 on he worked in the Indianapolis railways, where militiamen who had been mustered to deal with Morgan’s raid also worked, is it likely that he would have deliberately made enemies in his workplace by revealing his past? Either as participant or eyewitness he had good reasons for letting all this pass. Just to be enlisted in a rebel Kentucky Cavalry unit would have been enough to cause hostility, regardless of individual actions. Whatever he did do, he did not lie about it or brag.

Finally in 1952 Kiney did state that Shiloh was his most severe fight and although Kiney did not clearly state it, Morgan’s Raiders were there. This legendary unit was akin to the units of Mosby and Quantrill to many, all were essentially bandits. Admitting being one of them would have sounded a tall story or if believed, would have caused hostility.

Is this why Kiney said little about the war before 1952 and perhaps changed his birth year and surname? Much of his life after the war remains little known. He apparently did not fill out censuses, have photographs taken, attend reunions and may not be in street directories. Even his marriages are difficult to trace.

In March 1867 a William A. Kiney married in the town of Reynolds, Kentucky. In 1870 this man or another of that name aged twenty-five filled out a census in Kentucky, naming a wife and two baby children. At the recalled age of twenty-nine in that same year Kiney moved to Indianapolis and seems to have stayed there. He worked at different jobs, with the railways for twenty years, then as a saddle maker and also as a cabinet maker.

A dramatic moment came into his now prosaic life when he was involved in transporting equipment by rail from Indianapolis to fight Chicago’s great fire of 1871. Family members recalled how his recounting details of this matched information revealed many years later in the media. His story here has no motivation, no gain for fabrication. Why would he lie about this to his family? For those who believe the 1860s birthdates, this presents a problem. Seven year olds do not work on trains in emergency situations. They do not rush to travel hundreds of miles away from parents and home. They are very rarely employed in government departments.

He married four times, having several children. Two, perhaps three of the wives names are known, but not Pauline Dinkins. His last marriage was at the age of 96! After his last wife’s death in the summer of 1951 he went into a home where he was popular. He liked playing dominoes, card games and attending Bible study.

Nearly two years later he suffered broken bones in a fall, dying on June 23rd 1953 and being buried two days later. In Thomas Berger’s 1964 novel Little Big Man these are the exact dates and the exact year that Jack Crabb, a 111 year old Indian fighter originally from Indiana, now existing in an old people’s home, dies. This writer was actually planning a clarifying letter on this matter to Thomas Berger when news of the novelist’s death appeared. Whatever the origins of his idea, it is now lost.

Although he is a Wild West character, Crabb expresses hostility to the Union cavalry. Like Kiney, Crabb also outlived four wives. Like Kiney, Crabb has a credibility problem in verifying his long distant and violent past during interviews in an old people’s home. Real life inspiration? Art imitating life? As coincidence this would have to be in the millions to one. Like the 1920 marriage information this is a point to investigate even if the fictional Crabb, lecherous, bloodthirsty and cynical in old age appears as the opposite to Kiney. Hoar’s work shows that that Kiney’s death and funeral happened on the days given here, eleven years before the novel was published. The reproduced death certificate and the reproduced funeral director’s letter means there can be no doubt on this.

It has been alleged that Kiney was a fraud trying for the Confederate pension, but although he knew of that pension, he did not apply. In the 1952 interview he explained that Kentucky only paid pensions to its residents and he was not moving back there. He did not publicise or deny his Civil War service, gain any known aid from the Southern charities that cared for veterans or get himself feted by assorted organisations. A polite, modest and quiet man with no taste for attention, he had no motive for pretending to be a Confederate.

To be a fake he would have had to fake the 1850 and 1860 censuses and two separate enlistment documents. Forgeries do not easily get into Adjutant’s records, muster rolls and into America’s Official Records. Supposing that somehow this happened or somehow identity theft occurred, why someone who was not odd, did not want government money, attention or aid should put them there or thieve another’s identity becomes an implausible puzzle. Assuming they did manage that, or knew of them and pretended to be this person, why then insist on being born in 1861 or 1864 on other official records? Doing this would clearly make Kiney seem a fraudulent liar, a lunatic or a fool. In the recollections of his granddaughter he casually recalled seeing soldiers march off to war in 1861. Why lie to her? If he was Dinkin’s groom or the ash felt worker did he want to seem younger to his bride or his employers than he was?

The odd answer to this odd puzzle may well be the third possibility raised earler in this segment: reversing exactly what those believing the 1861 date thought: Kiney may have been a genuine veteran trying to avoid confirmation of that fact. Giving a birth year that precluded him from being in the war would obviously do that. This may also be why he changed the spelling of his name. Why hide?

Morgan’s raiders were legendary heroes in the South, but they were obviously seen as something very different in the North and Kiney was living in the North. Did he deliberately give a birth date that would preclude Civil War service and hence avoid ostracism? Did he change his name to avoid detection and live in a Northern state and avoid veteran’s organisations for the same reason? Or did he find himself in a northern state for other reasons, but came to the same attitude? A raider who perhaps killed, stole or destroyed among civilians would be treated differently to a regular army soldier who fought against other soldiers.

During the war in Kentucky enemy combatants were given two categories, Confederates and guerrillas. The latter were considered outlaws who could be executed and at least three were, two of them months after the war.[26] One of these raiders, Champ Ferguson, admitted to assorted atrocities and killings, but said everybody did this.[27] Another, John M. Bradley, only escaped execution by killing his sleeping guard and escaping.[28] He also avoided publicity. When Morgan and hundreds of his men were captured, they were jailed, not sent to a prisoner’s camp. Even being a regular Confederate did not guarantee regular treatment if caught. In 1863 it was reported as far away as Virginia that Confederate officers had been hanged by General Burnside for merely trying to recruit in Kentucky.[29] While this does not sound like the usual image of Burnside, Confederates believed it. In 1863 did Kiney get a taste of jail experiences he never wanted repeated? Or did he hear of what had happened to his compatriots? Things that he would never want to happen to him? Raiders were likely to face retribution in some form: execution, vigilante justice, legal prosecution, compensation payouts or ostracism were all possibilities. Captain Clarke’s trial served as a warning for others and hardly inspired confidence in Kentucky’s justice towards Confederates. Clarke was not allowed defence witnesses, his enlistment as a Confederate officer was ignored, the gallows were being built while the trial proceeded and no appeal was allowed.[30]

Like many soldiers did Kiney become disillusioned with the military world, the Confederacy or racism? Or did he dislike feeling guilt and stress when asked about horrors he preferred to forget? Is this why he left Kentucky, apparently to never return? Kentucky was predominantly Union and Reconstruction Era life there would have been difficult for a man seen as an enemy causing death and devastation. In Indiana he could make a new start, keep quiet about the war and be unknown, especially with a new surname, and the new birth date year of 1861 or 1864 would disconnect him from the war.

Even these possibilities are just that. Ironically among those claiming to be the last Civil War combatant, the last adult who probably was that man did not want either the title or the attention. Unlike those who lived after him he had the required enlistment evidence to prove that he was the last confirmed combatant veteran.

*

[1] As the major website concerning this information is no longer easily available this writer is unable to contact the writer for permission. The records do bear out what is said. Similar information is also included in ‘Fake and Exaggerated Claims’ (October 2009) www.grg org/Adams g2 filestab strip.

[2] Unsigned, Cover note to the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry CSA. Website.; Company F is dealt with in detail by Jim Power The Iron Man and the Mississippi Raiders. n.p. Author House, 2009. The quote comes from p163.

[3] The marriage documents for both William A. Kiney and Pauline Dinkins are findable through Amncestry .com by using their full names the date 11th March 1920 and the keyword Indianapolis.

[4] Linda Anderson, Cover Letter of December 6th 1982 sent to Professor Hoar and an attached photocopy of the Company G roll with Kiney’s name listed in alphabetical order.

[5] John B. Wells III & Jim Pritchard, The 10th Kentucky Cavalry CSA: The Yankee Chasers. Gateway Press, 1996. This source note is from a computerised excerpt without page numbers. civilwar.morganco.freeservers.com

[6] Ibid.

[7] Muster Roll of Diamond’s 10th Kentucky Cavalry CSA. www.potterflats.com. 10th Ky.html. This computerised version is also taken from the book The 10th Kentucky Cavalry CSA.: The Yankee Chasers.

[8] Wells & Pritchard, previous citation.

[9] William R. Brooksher & David K. Snider, Glory at a Gallop: Tales of Confederate Cavalry.

Washington: Brassey’s 1993. p20.

[10] Ibid,

[11] Bryan S. Bush, “Guerrilla Warfare in Kentucky.” Bryan S. Bush Books A website. www.bryanbush.com/hub.php?pages articles & layer a0807

[12] Bush previous citation; Paul Ashdown Edward Gaudill, The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest. 2005. Lanham, Maryland; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. p48.

[13] Ashdown and Gaudill, p48.

[14] Bush previous citation.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Brooksher & Snider, pp24-25.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid, pp24-25

[19] Zuzanna Balewski and Maya Fraser, “The Invasion of Indiana: Morgan’s Raid and the Battle of Corydon.” Moment of Indiana History (sic) posted 2nd August 2010.

[20] Brooksher & Snider, p23.

[21]Zuzanna Balewski and Maya Fraser.

[22]Quoted from an 1863 letter by Altia Porter, “A Young Girls Brush With The Civil War.” By the staff of the Indiana Museum. Moment of Indiana History (sic) posted 14th November 2011.

[23] “In Morgan’s Wake Without a Break” By the staff of the Indiana Museum. Moment of Indiana History (sic) posted April 29th 2013.; Brooksher & Snider, p162.

[24] Brooksher & Snider, p162-163.

[25] Ibid, p20, pp157-158.

[26] Unsigned web contributions from Executed Today. www.executedtoday.com/

[27] Ibid,

[28] Hoar, Vol. III p1621.

[29] John B. Jones, p265.

[30] Unsigned web contributions from Executed Today.

W. A. Kinney