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Williams offered The Dallas Morning News this bit of wisdom about how to reach old age: “I never et much. I get up for breakfast, turn around for dinner, and go to bed for supper. When I was riding up the Chisholm Trail the range cooks sort of held it against me because I was a light-eating man. I’ve always drunk lots of coffee, chewed plenty of tobacco, and haven’t tried to avoid any of this good Texas weather.”

Scandal struck only months before Williams passed away. A reporter named Lowell Bridwell published an expose that called into question William’s date of birth and veteran claims. Bridwell referred to Williams as an “enfeebled old man” who was a “Confederate veteran only in his memory-clouded mind.” Bridwell backed up his debunking with the fact that the 1860 census listed Willimas as a five-year-old, making the year of his birth 1854. If this was his true year of birth, Williams would have been only nine in 1864, making it unlikely he fought in the war. Bridwell also noted the National Archives didn’t list any Walter W. or Walter G. or Walter L. Williams from Mississippi as serving in the Confederate Army. One historian who met Mr. Williams as a boy wrote to TexasHillCountry.com to say that his grandfather once told him that Mr. Williams was too young to have fought in the war, but Williams’ older brother had served in the Confederate Army. Mr. Williams later claimed his brother’s Civil War veteran’s pension check and told reporters he was older than his actual years.