Question: What Texan claimed to be the last surviving combatant in the Civil War when he died in 1959?
Answer: Walter Washington Williams. Born in Mississippi, he claimed to have served as a forager in General Hood’s Texas Brigade in the last few months of the Civil War.
Although his 1932 application for a Confederate pension indicated he was born in 1842, researchers later found he did not appear in the Federal Census until 1860, when he was listed as being 5 years old. Still, in 1857, President Eisenhower bestowed Williams with the honorary title of general. When Williams died two years later in Houston, flags on U.S. government buildings were lowered to half-staff.