All Veterans Are Worthy of Honor

Recently, I began delving into my paternal grandmother's ancestry. I discovered a Civil War veteran. Military records sometimes reveal something different than we may anticipate.
Remembering Horace Baron Tripp

Horace Baron Tripp was born on November 13, 1830 (or 1831, depending on which record one consults) in Newry, Maine to Alvan Baron Tripp and Almira Carter Tripp. Newry is located in Oxford County in Southern Maine, within 20 miles of the New Hampshire boundary.

Horace married Elizabeth Wood. Their first little son, Rufus Tripp, was born on April 6, 1858, in Illinois. Rufus was my maternal grandmother’s father. To view a photograph of him, see the blog posting entitled One of the Hardest Things for a Little Girl to Do that appeared on September 8, 2013.

In 1863, James Preston Tripp was born to Horace and Elizabeth. His tombstone can be seen on this link: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=83441188

My great-great grandfather, Horace Baron Tripp, served in the Union army during the later days of the Civil War. According to his military records, he was a farmer living  in Lima, Illinois. On March 3, 1865, this 34-year-old brown-headed, hazel-eyed father of two signed up at Quincy, Illinois, for one year of military service with the Illinois Infantry. My father was the shortest of the Gates brothers who lived to adulthood. Yet at 5’8, he would have towered over Horace, his maternal great grandfather, whose height is listed as 5’3 at the time of his induction!

The final entry in his military record is – Died August 13, 1865 at Little Rock, Arkansas of disease. This young husband and father left his family to serve in the Union Army for one year. Yet Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, a little over one month after Private Horace Baron Tripp mustered into the Illinois infantry.

In the days when the snail mail of today was the quickest method of communication, it is unlikely that Elizabeth or Little Rufus knew that he was lying deathly ill in a Union Army camp in the Confederate state of Arkansas. Baby James was too young to know. The thought of leaving his little family behind in a vulnerable situation must have plagued his thoughts as his weakened body battled disease in the heat of summer.

Then in my mind, I transition to the turn of the century, late October of 1900, as Little Rufus all grown up with a wife, Nettie, and three little girls of his own, lay dying of kidney failure. Thirty-five years earlier, he was the only child old enough to comprehend that his father’s death meant he would never come back. What a painful irony that his oldest daughter, my grandmother, Mamie Irene, was the only one of his daughters who could understand the permanent impact of his fatal illness. Perhaps since he was unable to tell his own father good-bye, he called Grandma to his bedside for that very purpose. Heartsick, he realized his precious little Mamie would have to grow up without a father just as he had, but at least, the two of them could have a parting moment full of love for one another – a parting that my grandmother would remember into her nineties.

One may infer that Horace never fought in a battle or saw much action as a soldier: nevertheless, although his service was ended abruptly by disease and not as a result of combat, he had the heart of a soldier and deserves to be honored.  As we begin November, anticipating the observance of Veterans Day, let us remember all veterans who served honorably--no matter the role they played or their length of service. 

The entry to the Little Rock National Cemetery where Horace Baron Tripp is buried
in Section 1, Site 637. (Note - His death is incorrectly listed as October 27, 1865,
on the findagrave.com site.)