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Radio Diaries

The Last Civil War Widows

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2017

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Daisy Anderson and Alberta Martin lived what seemed like parallel lives. Both had grown up poor, children of sharecroppers in the South. Daisy in Tennessee; Alberta in Alabama. Both women got married in their early 20’s, to men who were near 80. And both those husbands had served in the Civil War. But as it happens, they’d served on opposite sides.

Daisy and Alberta were two of the last surviving Civil War widows.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to Radio Diaries. This is Joe.

0:03.0

And this is Elisa.

0:05.0

And we want to thank everybody who has donated to Radiotopia's annual fundraiser so far.

0:09.0

We are coming to the end of the road, but we still have yet to reach our goal of a thousand donors.

0:15.3

So we want to let you know some of the things that your donation supports here at Radio Diaries.

0:21.5

We just finished our big series, The Unmarched Graveyard, and there's some expenses that you might expect, you know, paying for our producers, paying for research, paying for some gear, and there's some unexpected things.

0:34.0

Elisa, is there anything that was kind of unexpected?

0:37.0

For sure, like with the first story that I worked on, I interviewed a woman named Susan

0:41.2

Harlebert, whose son had died and was buried on Hard Island.

0:45.4

And after I interviewed her, I realized that she had actually never visited her son's grave.

0:50.1

So we decided to set that up.

0:52.0

You know, I went to pick her up a couple hours north of the city that cost us some gas money.

0:56.4

We put her up in a hotel and I bought a bunch of pizza and bagels to power us through the weekend.

1:01.7

And it was a really beautiful and

1:04.0

carb-filled couple days.

1:07.0

We hope that gives you a glimpse at some of the things that your donation helps

1:10.0

to support here at Radio Diaries

1:12.0

and we hope that you'll support us and the rest of the shows in the Radio Topia family.

1:17.0

You can donate today at radiotopia.F.M. slash donate. That's Radiotopia. F.M. slash donate.

1:24.0

And thank you so much for your support. Radiotopia. From PRX is Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries. I'm Joe Richmond.

1:41.0

I've always been fascinated by the idea of a parallel universe.

1:46.2

That somewhere out there, someone is living the same life you are, except that because it's

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