The last verified combat veteran of the American Revolutionary War was John Gray. He died in Noble County, Ohio, at the age of 104. Gray was present at the Siege of Yorktown, among other battles.
So here was a man who lived long enough to a.) fight in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and b.) see the conclusion of the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Speaking of the Civil War: many Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate, lived well into the first half of the twentieth century. I have seen newspaper clippings from the Cincinnati Enquirer, showing such men in Memorial Day parades as late as the early 1940s.
My paternal grandfather (born in 1909) once told me that he interacted with many Civil War veterans during his Indiana boyhood, though they were all very old men by this time.
The last verified veteran of the American Civil War, Albert Henry Woolson, died in Duluth, Minnesota in 1956. Woolson was 106 years old.
Wow. Nineteen fifty-six. That is not so long ago, in historical terms. My parents were both ten years old in 1956. I would be born a mere 12 years later. So fifteen years before I was born, the American Civil War was still technically part of “living memory”.
The last verified African American slave, Peter Mills, died in 1972 at the age of 110. (There were a few other claimants who died around the same time, but Mills was the oldest one whose story was verifiable.) That was well within my lifetime. (I was four.)
Facts like this fascinate me, because I am both a.) a history aficionado, and b.) a nostalgic. (I had a strong sense of nostalgia by the time I entered my teens.)
I can claim no meetings with Civil War veterans or former slaves, but I do have one connection to the nineteenth century. My great grandfather, who was born in 1895, lived until 1987, the year I turned nineteen. I can now claim to know, or have known, individuals born in three consecutive centuries.
-ET