Categotry Archives: Misc.

Alberta Stewart Martin, one of the last known widows of a Civil War veteran, died on May 31 of complications from a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago. She was 97.
Born to Alabama sharecroppers in 1906, Alberta married three times. She was 18 when she wed a cab driver named Howard Farrow. While she was pregnant with their first child, Farrow abandoned his family. Six months after their son was born, her estranged husband died in a car accident.
Alberta, her father and her infant son moved to Opp, Ala., where she met Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin. An 81-year-old widower from Georgia, Martin received a $50/mo. pension for serving as a private in the 4th Alabama Infantry.
Alberta, 21, needed a husband to help raise her little boy; William didn’t wish to spend his remaining years alone. So, for mutual companionship and support, they married in 1927. Despite the six-decade age difference, Alberta and her husband welcomed a son less than a year after exchanging their vows. William died on July 8, 1931, and two months later, Alberta wed Charlie Martin, her late husband’s grandson. They were married for over 50 years, until his death in 1983.
After living in obscurity for most of her life, Alberta’s final years were spent in the company of history buffs. The Sons of Confederate Veterans feted her at conventions and reenactments. In 1996, the group helped to persuade the state of Alabama to give Alberta a Confederate widow’s pension of $2,500/mo.
Alberta will lie in state in the parlor of the first White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Ala. Nineteenth-century period music will be played at her funeral by the 52nd Regimental String Band of Memphis, Tenn., and the Olde Towne Brass Band of Huntsville, Ala. A Confederate reenactor heritage funeral march and graveside service will be held at the New Ebenezer Baptist Church Cemetery in Curtis, Ala.
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Not all World War II riveters were named Rosie.
While the men went off to fight the Japanese and Germans, Emma C. Wagner, worked the 3 p.m.-to-11 p.m. shift as a riveter for Western Electric Co. in Baltimore. When the war ended, she toiled in a sewing factory and spent 25 years working on an assembly line at the Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Distillery.
Born on a vegetable farm in East Baltimore, Wagner left school in the second grade to help raise her 13 siblings. It wasn’t until she had a daughter of her own that Wagner learned to read and write.
She died on May 9 of lung cancer at the age of 90.

Robert Mokros was a shoemaker who dedicated his life to helping people with disfigured feet.
Mokros was only 13 when doctors amputated his foot following a farming accident. The German teen learned how to make shoes at a religious school for children with disabilities, and created footwear for Adolf Hitler’s army during World War II. When the Soviets advanced on his home, he and his wife Marta, and their two sons, fled to the refugee camps in the British-controlled zone of Germany. To survive, Robert traded his cobbling skills for food.
In 1956, the Mokros family immigrated to the United States and settled in Minnesota. Robert eventually opened his own store in downtown Minneapolis, where people from all over America came to request his shoemaking skills. Mokros would look at a handicapped person’s feet and cut a likeness from a block of wood. Then, using sketches and casts of disfigured feet, he’d create leather shoes and boots for his customers.
“In my father, I met a man who made others walk,” his son, retired Rev. Norbert Mokros, told the Star Tribune.
After more than three decades in the footwear business, Mokros was forced to retire in 1998, due to ill health. He died in his sleep on May 1 at the age of 90.

Georgiana Lair McMenamin, the last New York Fire Department matron, died on May 9. Cause of death was not released. She was 102.
The NYFD created the fire matron position in the 1860s. These women, who were often firefighters’ widows in need of income, were paid by a “house tax” collected from the firefighters’ salaries.
McMenamin’s husband, Engine Co. 75 firefighter James Joseph McMenamin, collapsed of a heart attack after fighting a blaze in 1930. To support her family, she became a firehouse matron on the Upper West Side of Manhattan two years later, and earned her keep by sewing, ironing, making beds and washing linens.
The New York native served in this position for 60 years, and was the last matron in the city. Although McMenamin retired in 1991, the firefighters from Engine Co. 40/Ladder Co. 35 continued to pay her $100 monthly stipend from their house taxes.

Elvis A. Presley, a Wisconsin resident with a passion for the king of rock ‘n roll, died on April 26. Cause of death was not released. He was 67.
Born Herbert A. Baer, Presley legally changed his name in 1978 to honor his idol, Elvis. He spent 27 years working at the Neenah Foundry Co., a supplier of gray and ductile iron castings, until his retirement in 1998. In his spare time, Presley was an Elvis impersonator.