Gotta say, living long enough to have been an adult during slavery and making it to see the nuclear age is fuckin bonkers. Then again I guess it just serves to prove that really wasnt all that long ago.
EDIT: an adult fighting for slavery, no less.
keninsd on
That is not an F-86.
DullMind2023 on
F-100 Super Sabre, but whatever, did the guy get to fly in it or any other jet?
The_Crass-Beagle_Act on
It’s an interesting photo conceptually, but Bill Lundy being an actual confederate army veteran is probably apocryphal:
>Claiming to be a member of the Confederate Army, William Lundy was 107 when this photo was snapped for an article in the Boston Traveller in 1955.
>It should be noted that Lundy’s actual age and military service have been heavily disputed over the years.
>William Lundy was allegedly born near Troy, in Pike County, Alabama, on January 18, 1848 (also reported at Coffee Springs, Coffee County).
>He is said to have enlisted in the last days of March 1864, at age 16; Company D (Brown’s), 4th Alabama Cavalry Regiment (Home Guard) at Elba; and to have been honorably discharged at Elba in May 1865, on account of the close of the war.
>He moved his family to Laurel Hill in 1890, where he and his wife, Mary Jane Lassiter, raised ten children. He was granted a Confederate soldier’s pension in Florida, no. 8948, of $600 per annum to be paid effective from June 12, 1941.
>However, 1860 Census records suggest that Lundy was born in 1859, which would mean that he was only six years old at the end of the Civil War—implying that he could never have fought in it—and 98 when he died.
>In addition, research in 2016 suggested that no evidence in favor of either Lundy or his father having served could be found.
As with many of the very old “Confederate veterans” (especially those that lived into the 1950s), it’s very likely that William Lundy’s claims of service in the Confederate Army were fabricated in order to fraudulently draw a pension during the Great Depression (a pension which he started drawing in 1941 despite never being able to present evidence of his service). Census records list his birth year as 1860 instead of 1848, as he claimed. It’s still remarkable that someone who lived almost half their life before the invention of the airplane could live to see a fighter jet, but it’s a little less attention-grabbing than him being an ancient veteran. Here’s a good summary of the findings of historian Scott R. Smith in a newspaper from the region in which Lundy lived from a few years ago: [“Civil War historian questions Lundy’s legend”](https://www.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2016/01/27/civil-war-historian-questions-lundys-legend-video-photos/32606755007/)
AlexanderTox on
Standing next to the jet of the enemy he fought against to preserve slavery. What a guy.
IAmSpartacustard on
What in the spam bot is this post title? Everything is wrong
7 Comments
Gotta say, living long enough to have been an adult during slavery and making it to see the nuclear age is fuckin bonkers. Then again I guess it just serves to prove that really wasnt all that long ago.
EDIT: an adult fighting for slavery, no less.
That is not an F-86.
F-100 Super Sabre, but whatever, did the guy get to fly in it or any other jet?
It’s an interesting photo conceptually, but Bill Lundy being an actual confederate army veteran is probably apocryphal:
>Claiming to be a member of the Confederate Army, William Lundy was 107 when this photo was snapped for an article in the Boston Traveller in 1955.
>It should be noted that Lundy’s actual age and military service have been heavily disputed over the years.
>William Lundy was allegedly born near Troy, in Pike County, Alabama, on January 18, 1848 (also reported at Coffee Springs, Coffee County).
>He is said to have enlisted in the last days of March 1864, at age 16; Company D (Brown’s), 4th Alabama Cavalry Regiment (Home Guard) at Elba; and to have been honorably discharged at Elba in May 1865, on account of the close of the war.
>He moved his family to Laurel Hill in 1890, where he and his wife, Mary Jane Lassiter, raised ten children. He was granted a Confederate soldier’s pension in Florida, no. 8948, of $600 per annum to be paid effective from June 12, 1941.
>However, 1860 Census records suggest that Lundy was born in 1859, which would mean that he was only six years old at the end of the Civil War—implying that he could never have fought in it—and 98 when he died.
>In addition, research in 2016 suggested that no evidence in favor of either Lundy or his father having served could be found.
[https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/civil-war-veteran-fghter-jet-1955/](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/civil-war-veteran-fghter-jet-1955/)
As with many of the very old “Confederate veterans” (especially those that lived into the 1950s), it’s very likely that William Lundy’s claims of service in the Confederate Army were fabricated in order to fraudulently draw a pension during the Great Depression (a pension which he started drawing in 1941 despite never being able to present evidence of his service). Census records list his birth year as 1860 instead of 1848, as he claimed. It’s still remarkable that someone who lived almost half their life before the invention of the airplane could live to see a fighter jet, but it’s a little less attention-grabbing than him being an ancient veteran. Here’s a good summary of the findings of historian Scott R. Smith in a newspaper from the region in which Lundy lived from a few years ago: [“Civil War historian questions Lundy’s legend”](https://www.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2016/01/27/civil-war-historian-questions-lundys-legend-video-photos/32606755007/)
Standing next to the jet of the enemy he fought against to preserve slavery. What a guy.
What in the spam bot is this post title? Everything is wrong