EXCLUSIVE: Revealed, America's last living link to the Civil War. The 83-year-old woman who is only person STILL getting war benefits - 148 years after her father fought for BOTH sides

Irene Triplett was born into rural poverty in North Carolina



She receives $876 a year from the government as thanks for her father taking part in the war which ended 148 years ago

Father Moses Triplett was 83 when she was born and fought first for the Confederates and then the Unionists during the war



Unable to look after herself, Irene has spent the past 60 years living in a facility and is no longer visited by relatives



The last child of an American Civil War soldier who is still receiving benefits linked to the conflict is an 83-year-old woman whose father fought on both sides, MailOnline can exclusively reveal.



Irene Triplett receives $876 a year from the government thanks to her father Moses taking part in the war that ended in 1865, some 148 years ago. He fought with both the Unionists and the Confederates.

Irene was only eight when Moses died and after a youth spent in rural poverty working on chicken farms and in a bakery she was put in a home at the age of 21.

Irene Triplett, 84, is the last child of an American Civil War soldier still receiving benefits linked to the conflict, this is her in 2010 along with historian Jerry Orton

She suffers from a mental disability and, unable to look after herself, has remained in the same facility for the last 60 years.



MailOnline is telling her story as this week it was reported that two people were still receiving benefits linked to the Civil War.

In fact Irene is the only one as the other, a 93-year-old man living in Tennessee, died last August.

Her father Moses served in B Company of the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry between October 20 1864 and August 8 1865.



Military records suggest that his time with the Confederates was earlier and that he enlisted with the 53 Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry in 1862.

Under the terms of his benefits package, because Irene was disabled under the age of 18 - she had deformities at birth - she would get financial assistance for the rest of her life.

Suffering disabilities and unable to look after herself, Irene has spent the past 60 years living in a facility

Irene was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina and her extraordinary story featured in a local genealogical society magazine which pieced together her past by examining public and military records.



Irene was born prematurely on January 9 1930. The Federal Census of 1930 lists Moses as 83, Irene’s mother Elida as 34 and Irene herself as three months old.



Such a marriage was not uncommon at the time - the women got a good pension and a reliable source of income and the men got a younger wife who would care for them in their old age.

What is remarkable is that the effects have lasted so long.



Living with them at the time in their simple log cabin on Cougar Mountain near Ferguson, North Carolina, was Moses’ mother-in-law Eda Hall and Frank Hall, his brother-in-law.

This illustration shows the capture of North Carolina's Fort Fisher. Moses served in B Company of the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry between October 20 1864 and August 8 1865

According to Everett’s oldest son Charlie Triplett, 59, Moses - or ‘Uncle Mose’ as he was known - was quite the character.

Moses had been married before Elida and a picture of him with his first wife shows him with a rattlesnake around his neck and a long mustache coming below his chin, in the style of Wyatt Earp.



Charlie said: ‘He used to sit on his porch shooting acorns out of trees. He owned lots of land and his neighbors were scared of him.



‘There was one time when he lost all his savings when the bank he kept it with shut down. He went down there and stood on a car shouting at everyone like some kind of preacher.



‘After that he kept all his money in a big bag.

‘There was another time when he saw a black man on his property so he thought he was a slave.

This newspaper clipping from the Wilkes Journal Patriot in 1938 reports the passing of Irene's father Moses, known locally as 'Uncle Mose'

‘Moses and another guy took him up to a cliff and pushed him off - but the black man survived. I thought to myself: ‘Lord have mercy!’ There was a lot of stuff that went on back then’.



Irene’s brother Everett was born in 1933 but five years later Moses died and the family was thrown into disarray.



According to Charlie, the authorities in North Carolina demolished their home and Everett fled even though he was just 14 because he did not want to go into care.



He said that Everett ‘didn’t come back until he was old enough so that nobody would mess with him’.

An article in the Wilkes Journal Patriot newspaper from July 18 1938 writes about Moses’ demise at 91 under the headline: ‘Moses Triplett taken by death’.



It also hailed him as ‘one of the most remarkable characters of his community’.

The certificate was presented to Irene Triplett in 2011 and proves that she is the daughter of a soldier who fought in the civil war

During a reunion of Gettysburg veterans he was placed with the Confederate soldiers, even though everyone thought he had fought on the Union side.



In fact he fought with both sides, but the Wilkes Journal Patriot mistakenly writes that he ‘fooled them all’ into thinking he was a Confederate.



Elida remarried soon after Moses’ death and the local genealogical society article paints a picture of Irene’s life thereafter, which seems unrelentingly harsh.



It says that she does ‘not recall much of her childhood and does not have any recollection of Moses’.



She has ‘virtually no memories of fun, presents, neighbors or such as they lived so isolated and she had to work on the farm each day’ where they raised chickens and pigs.

Irene ‘did not like school’ and ‘vividly recalls twice being terrified as the school bus had close calls’ and nearly killed her on the icy winter roads.

Military records which prove that Irene's father Moses Triplett served in the 53 Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry in 1862

Irene left home at 13 and initially worked on a chicken farm, but got a second job baking cakes at bakery which she much preferred.



She never married or had children, and appears to have moved into the care home at 21, though it could have been sooner.



Everett meanwhile held down a string of jobs and for a while became a ‘moonshiner’, which meant running illegal liquor across North Carolina.



He also worked in a saw mill but died some 15 years ago from a heart attack at the age of 68 having had four children.



Charlie said: ‘He drank all the time and smoked about three packs of cigarettes a day. He quit and went cold turkey instead of easing off and the doctor said it was too much of a shock for his body.’

Irene was tracked down by the dedicated research of Lorraine Orton, the former national historian for the Women’s Relief Corps until her death in November last year.

Moses Triplett's army pension book: He was twice his wife's age when Irene was born but such marriages were not uncommon at the time as the women got a good pension

Her husband Jerry, from Syracuse, New York, was also involved in the research and has been handling matters since then.



Mr Orton told MailOnline: ‘I know Irene and I have visited her. She’s not as old as you think and she’s only 81.



‘Irene is illiterate and never really learned to read or write. She grew up in the Appalachians and was very poor.



‘She has autism and when she was born they did not really have the resources to help people.



‘She can take care of herself but her cognitive abilities were impaired when she was born.



‘She took 30 years to track down - I wrote to her and other children whose parents had fought in the Civil War and she was the only one that wrote back. I’ve visited her twice and we’ve written a few times.

‘It was her birthday in January and I know that people do send her money. She can’t have any more than than $2,000 in her checking account or she won’t be entitled to her benefits.’

In this list of Gettysburg veterans Moses is listed as a Unionist, although he first fought in the civil war on the Confederate side

MailOnline spoke to Jerry Orton at his Syracuse home. He has meet with Irene several times in recent years

Asked if Miss Triplett had ever spoken about the fact she is still benefiting from the Civil War, he said: ‘She doesn’t really have any memories of her father. Because of her condition, visits with her last 10 minutes then you know the visit is over.



‘The man who runs the facility is very sympathetic to her because he is a veteran himself.



‘One time I asked her what she wanted more than anything else and she jokingly said: ‘Money!’



‘Irene is the only person who is receiving benefits from the federal government. It’s possible that there are some who are getting benefits from individual states, but she is the only one getting federal money.



‘Her father actually fought for the Confederate and the Union side. I’ve seen other cases like this but the federal government is still paying her benefits.



‘When we spoke to the United Daughters of the Confederacy (which represents daughters of Confederate soldiers) about her, they called her a traitor - and they meant it’.

Charlie added that there was no feud between her and the rest of the family.



He said: ‘We used to go up there and see here all the time but we don’t so much any more.



‘She works up there, she cleans the place, she does lots of stuff.



‘She does look just like him though - she is short and Moses was short too’.

Sarah Anderson, chair of Daughters of Union Veterans, said there could have been an innocent explanation as to why Moses changed sides.

She said: ‘He could have been kept as a prisoner by the Confederacy and escaped. He could also have been swapped to the Union as part of a Prisoner of War exchange.



Civil war: Wounded soldiers being tended in the field after the Battle of Chancellorsville near Fredericksburg, Va. in 1863

‘Or he could have just run away from the Confederacy and decided that the Union fed and clothed its soldiers better.



‘The Confederates didn't get the supplies like the Union did. There’s lot of reasons why he could have changed over’.



The story of the veterans came to light this after a report was published this week about the lingering costs of war and veterans' pensions on the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

It found than $40billion each year is spent on compensation for veterans of the Spanish-American War of 1898, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns, and the war in Afghanistan.



During the Civil War, 617,000 Americans were killed – approximately the same number as those who died in all of the wars up to that point, including the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.



The last verified Civil War veteran, Albert Woolson, was 109 when he died in 1956, while the last Civil War widow, Gertrude Janeway, passed away in 2003, aged 93, though some dispute that she was the last living widow.



Mrs Janeway had married her husband, John Janeway, when he was 81 and she was 18 and received a $70 pension check monthly.