16. A Civil War Widow Was Still Alive When Obama Was Elected President
The US Civil War, driven primarily by the issue of black chattel slavery, ended in 1865 with a Union victory that put a de facto seal on the demise of slavery. In 2008, 143 years later, America elected its first black president, Barrack Obama. Incredible as it may sound, A Civil War widow, who had been married to a Confederate soldier, was still alive in 2008.
Maudie White Hopkins (1914 – 2008), born Maudie Cecilia Acklin in Arkansas, grew up in an impoverished family of 10 children during the Great Depression in the hardscrabble Ozarks. To help put food on the table and make ends meet, a teenaged Maudie cleaned house and did laundry for an elderly Civil War veteran, William Cantrell, who had been widowed years earlier.