Bay City Times - Friday, January 31, 1936 (Page 4)
CIVIL WAR VETERAN DIES AT AGE OF 94
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John Wilbur Succumbs at West Side Home
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John Wilbur, one of the four surviving veterans of the Grand Army, died early this morning at his home, 401 North Dean street. He was 94 years of age.
Ill for some time, Mr. Wilbur had dropped from public life where he had been know for years as a representative of the steadily declining number of men who went out to the battlefields of ‘64.
One of the earliest residents of this section, it was Mr. Wilbur’s common boast that he live in Bay county “before there was a Bay county”. A former occupant of a farm near Auburn, he had lived in Bay City since 1915.
He served in Tennessee under Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, who commanded the Army of the Cumberlands and was defeated at Chickamauga by the Confederate forces.
Mr. Wilbur made frequent appearances at schools on patriotic occasions and was well known by hundreds of school children, to whom he was a heroic representative of the Boys in Blue. His death leaves three veterans of the Union forces in Bay City, B. G. Grooms, T. E. Webster, and Martin Heath.
Surviving are three daughters, Mrs. Alvie Stewart, of Rochester, MI, Mrs. Addie Bell, of Detroit, and Miss Nina, at home; two sons, John of Illinois, and Andrew of Bay City; two sisters, Mrs. Matilda Heustis and Mrs. Jospehine O’Conner, both of Flint.
He was a member of the G.A.R. veterans organization.
Funeral arrangements will be announced later.
Civil War