Record of Soldier’s War Service Clouded by Time

Alberta Martin is known as the official Last Confederate Widow--but did her husband really fight in the Civil War?

Until recently, the media have trumpeted the story of the late Confederate Pvt. William Jasper Martin, without questioning details provided by the 92-year-old widow and her friends:

Pvt. Martin never forgot the screams of men cut down in a bloody battle in Richmond, Va., according to a November 1995 article in the United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine. In a muddy Petersburg trench, Martin was hot, wet and shivering with fever, a backwoods boy in a shattered army that captivated the world with its “everlasting legacy of valor,” a Confederate Veteran magazine article said last year. Martin was one of only a few hundred men to survive the nine-month siege of Petersburg, Va., noted a People magazine article in August 1996.

But official Civil War records show otherwise, according to the book “Confederates in the Attic,” which was published last year. And a review by The Times found that the records are inconclusive.

In the bestselling book, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tony Horwitz writes that National Archives records indicate that Martin deserted after serving no more than a month. Horwitz, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, suggests that Martin’s war record has been pumped up by Confederate heritage groups. The groups, such as Sons of Confederate Veterans, hail Mrs. Martin as a symbol of the South’s proud past. (Mrs. Martin was 21 when she married Pvt. Martin, 81, who died in 1932.)

Her supporters have dogged Horwitz at book signings, asking for a retraction.

He would be happy to make any corrections regarding Martin’s service in future editions, Horwitz says, should anyone provide records contradicting his research or interviews with Mrs. Martin.

But, counters Kenneth Chancey, a Sons of Confederate Veterans member and close friend of Mrs. Martin’s, Horwitz won’t even look at their records on Martin. In 1996, Chancey led a campaign to reinstate Mrs. Martin’s Confederate widow’s pension and add a supplement. Mrs. Martin had been entitled to the state pension since her third husband’s death in 1983 but had not reapplied; the state will not disclose the amount.

The state had closed the pension fund 10 years earlier, assuming that the last widow had died. But after Chancey submitted documents verifying Martin’s service, the state was required by law to provide the pension, says a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Human Resources. And according to state code, pensions are not paid to the widows of deserters.

The dispute boils down to a question of identity.

National Archives records do list a William J. Martin of the 4th Alabama Infantry as a deserter, according to a review by The Times. But Chancey says his research shows at least three William Martins in that regiment--and the files of all three got mingled together years after the war, when the records were compiled for the archives. The record listing a William J. Martin as a deserter identifies him as 16 at the time of enlistment and an Alabama native; Mrs. Martin’s late husband was 18 when he joined and a Georgia native.

A National Archives researcher says the records are spotty, and no other files are available to verify Martin’s length of service or combat. Records show his regiment fought in the blood bath at Petersburg, for instance, but there’s no official way to confirm Martin’s presence.

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Staff writer Judy Lin of the Washington bureau contributed to this story.

* Renee Tawa can be reached by e-mail at renee.tawa@latimes.com.