Uncle Bill Lundy Memorial Rededication (FL)

[struggle4progress]

By TOM McLAUGHLIN
Posted Nov. 7, 2015 at 1:54 PM
Updated Nov 7, 2015 at 3:58 PM
... Lundy died in 1957 ... Legend has it he left home at the age of 14 to join the Confederacy ... The memorial was created not long after his death. But a Confederate flag has traditionally flown over the Lundy memorial ... Pressured to remove the Confederate flag ... the .. City Council .. voted unanimously .. to do so. The Lundy family was given the go ahead to move the flag and the memorial to private property ... The speakers leveled criticism at judges and politicians, including the Crestview City Council. They accused them of removing Confederate flags from public places, prayer from schools and the Ten Commandments from courthouses ...
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/article/20151107/NEWS/151109384

... census records suggest .. Lundy was born in May 1860 ...

[eppur_se_muova]

1. “We know courage was Bill Lundy, a mere boy when he followed the call to war,” McKinley said.

Well, that's an understatement !

[struggle4progress]

2. It's a strange story. There's dispute about when and where he was born;

records don't exist for his alleged confederate time in Alabama; he apparently moved to Florida around 1890; and there's no evidence he ever claimed to have been a confederate until the 1930s, when he started applying for confederate pensions. Somewhere around 1940 -- 75 years after the war ended -- Florida decided to pay a pension based on his claims for confederate time in Alabama

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Which smells like "stolen valor" -- or at least stolen pensions.

This is very common in claims of extreme longevity -- usually, someone assumes his father's or older brother's identity in order to qualify for pensions or disqualify himself from the draft.

[struggle4progress]

4. Here's his Florida pension application, which contains almost no information.

The full file seems to be available here, including a report his name was not found on muster rolls

Transcripts of various related correspondence seems to be available here, including a 1939 pension disapproval due to claimed service in Alabama rather than Florida. Amazingly, he found two nearby neighbors in Florida who swore they also served in the same small Alabama company

The Alabama Civil War Service Database apparently lifts its information from his Florida pension applications

This website says the pension was finally granted in 1941 by a special act of the Florida Legislature. The Tuscaloosa News (17 January 1954) also mentions this special act of the Florida Legislature and adds that his memory slips back .. to the time when he was .. guarding the Coffee County courthouse in Elba .. in 1865

According to the pension application indicates he enlisted in Elba at the end of March 1864. But Ward's Raiders burned the courthouse to the ground in April 1864