THE WAUPACA COUNTY POST

October 31, 1991

 

WHEN THEN WAS NOW

By Wayne A. Guyant

 

            Two men who served the North during the days of the Civil War spent their last days at the Old Grand Army Home on the shores of the beautiful Rainbow Lake at King.

            Both – Israel J. Cannon and Lansing A. Wilcox – lived past 100.

            Lansing A. Wilcox, who was one of the nation’s last five surviving Civil War veterans at his death on September 29, 1951, had attained the advanced age of 105 years.

            In 1947, with the death of Josiah Cass of Eau Clair, Wilcox became the state’s last surviving Civil War veteran.

            Wilcox was born at Salem (Kenosha County), March, 1846.  A short time later the family moved to New York, NY, where they remained for a short time; while Lansing was still a young lad they returned to Wisconsin, locating this time in the Cadott area near the village which was named for Jean Baptiste Cadotte, a French Indian trapper who in 1838 had settled there, on the Yellow River.

            The War Between the States started while Lansing Wilcox was a teenager and continued for three years before he attained the age of 18.

            He enlisted in Company F, 4^th Wis. Cavalry, and was sent to Baton Rouge, LA.  Upon his discharge from the Army at the end of the Civil War with the rank of corporal, he returned to Wisconsin.  Here he became restless and moved about during the next three years, first to Kansas and back to Wisconsin, then to Washington and back to the Badger State.

            He taught school at Cadott for a time, and in 1902, when he was 56, became the postmaster there, serving for the next 10 years.  At the end of this time he retired and lived on his pension.  For his final 18 months, he lived at the Grand Army Home, where he was in his own words “waiting for the last trumpet to call me home.”

            Preceding Mr. Wilcox in death were his first three wives and a son, Alonzo.

            In 1942, when he was 96 years old, he married 65-year-old Marie Duttle, who survived him.

            This old veteran lies beside his first wife, Mary (1841-1926), and his son, Alonzo (1876-1899), in the Brooklawn Cemetery at Cadott (Chippewa County).

            It was almost 19 years after the death of Lansing A. Wilcox, that Wisconsin’s last Civil War veteran finally had a marker erected at his gravesite.  It is a plain, 12 by 24 inch tombstone, which lies level with the ground that marks the grave of a soldier who was one of almost four million men who served in the War Between the States.

            Israel J. Cannon passed away at the Grand Army Home March 13, 1941.  The 101-year-old Civil War veteran was one of the last of many “Boys in Blue” who had walked, chatted, rested and lived at the Grand Army Home at Waupaca’s beautiful Chain o’ Lakes since the institution was established in 1888.

            On the night of his death, he left a half glass of milk that he had been drinking, and the centenarian quietly took leave of this world, slumping in his bed so quietly that he attendant was surprised when he found his lifeless body.

            He went to join his comrades of Chickamauga, Lynchberg, Bull Run and Gettysburg.

            Israel J. Cannon had lived a full life on this earth before he answered “Taps,” a soldier’s farewell.

            Cannon was born in Pennsylvania in 1840, but was a resident of Wisconsin when he enlisted at Columbia County on August 15, 1862.  He served in Company C, 23^rd Wis. Infantry until his honorable discharge January 21, 1865, at Madison.

            On July 11, 1886, he was married to Parthena Quimby, at Marion, after which they became the parents of six children:  Mrs. Julius (Amelia) Satier; Mrs. Edward Pomplum of Wautoma; Mrs. Charles Thomas of Lee Center, NY; Benjamin Cannon, Rib Lake; Cecil R. Cannon, West DePere; and Stillman Cannon, Rome, NY.

            Mr. Cannon first entered the home in 1905, but was there continuously after 1921.