Irene Triplett, the last person to receive a Civil War pension, dies at 90 in North Carolina. Her father, Mose, was 83 when Irene was born.

Irene Triplett (Courtesy of Dennis St. Andrew)

For the past five years, Dennis St. Andrew and his wife Denise visited Irene Triplett at a North Carolina nursing home, bringing flowers and gifts to someone they called a “real daughter” -- a first-generation child of a Civil War Union veteran.

Triplett was one of only a few surviving children of a Civil War soldier (her father was 83 when she was born in 1930) and the last person to receive a pension for a veteran’s service in the conflict. That soldier, Pvt. Mose Triplett, first fought for the Confederacy before switching sides in the middle of the war.

On Sunday, Triplett died in Wilkesboro, the nursing home and an area funeral home confirmed to the Picket. The Wall Street Journal, which was first to write about her death, said Triplett died at age 90 following a fall.

St. Andrew, a past commander of the North Carolina branch of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, told the Picket that Triplett didn’t remember much about her father, not a surprise given the age difference and the passage of time since he died in 1938.

According to the newspaper and other reports, Irene Triplett received $73.13 a month because her father was in the Union army and her mental impairments qualified her as a helpless adult child of a veteran.

The Picket has reached out to the Department of Veteran Affairs for comment.

The grave of Irene's father. (Courtesy of Dennis St. Andrew)

Mose Triplett initially served with the 53^rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment and transferred to the 26th North Carolina. He went missing from a hospital after becoming ill before the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. The 26th suffered high casualties at Gettysburg.

In 1864, the deserter joined the Federal 3^rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, or Kirk’s Raiders, in Tennessee.

"After the war, former Kirk’s Raiders were despised in areas of the former Confederacy,” the Wall Street Journal said. “Pvt. Triplett, by then a civilian with a reputation for orneriness, kept pet rattlesnakes at his home near Elk Creek, N.C. He often sat on his front porch with a pistol on his lap.”

Triplett's first wife, Mary, died in 1923 and the veteran married Elida the following year. She was 34 when she gave birth to Irene. In her later years, according to reports, the daughter lived in various nursing homes.

Mose Triplett died at age 92 in 1938, shortly after attending a reunion at Gettysburg. His pension was extended to his wife and then Irene, one of two siblings to live to adulthood.

(Courtesy of Dennis St. Andrew)

Members of the SUVCW will remember Irene Triplett by attaching a black mourning ribbon to their membership badges.