Henry Mack's Obituary of the 57th USCT

From the December 14, 2014, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder  "Civil War veteran Henry Mack, 107 years old, dies.  Buried April 11, 1945."

From the April 13, 1945 issue.

Funeral services for Henry Mack, reported to be one of the oldest Civil War veterans in the country, who died at veterans hospital, Sunday, April 8, were held Wednesday, April 11, at Zion Baptist Church with Reverend Claude Ireland, chaplain of the Minnesota Soldiers Home, officiating.

Mr. Mack, a native of Fayette City, Alabama, was 107 years old at the time of his death.  He was vice commander of the Minnesota  Department of the Grand Army of the Republic.  He fought in the Civil War in the Fifty-seventh Infantry Colored Volunteers from Arkansas.

Members of the Johnny Baker Post were the active pallbearers.  Internment was at Crystal Lake cemetery.

Surviving are a step -son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Johnson, with whom he made his home.  Woodward Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.

Henry Mack, Born a Slave, Served USCT-- Part 5: 'There's a Lot of Damn Good Fight in Me Yet!'

His second wife, Sadie Johnson, died in 1935.  Then in his nineties, Mack moved in with her son from a previous marriage and his wife, Clarence and Allie Johnson.  They regularly drove him to GAR meetings and Sunday services at Zion Baptist Church.

With the United States engaged in World War II, Mack was in his 100s when he climbed the stairs for the first time in years, loaded a shotgun and put on his Army jacket.

When his family members found him on a nearby porch, he was headed to an Army recruiting station.

Told that he was too old to go to war again, Mack said:  "There's a lot of damn good fight in me yet!"

--Old Secesh

Henry Mack and the 57th USCT-- Part 4: After the War

Mack was among the nearly 200,000 black Civil War soldiers and sailors.  He completed his three year enlistment as a corporal on the southwestern frontier, joking later in life  about the, long walk he had to make between Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and  and the New Mexico Territory.

After returning to Arkansas to search in vain for his mother, Mack moved to Omaha in the 1870s.  He married Martha Green, the widowed mother of  three in 1881 and worked as a janitor, a porter, carpenter and  plumber.

After Martha's death and the Omaha Race Riots in 1919, Mack moved to Minneapolis.

--Old Secesh

Henry Mack and the 57th USCT-- Part 3: Ran Away from Alabama Plantation

Steve Chicoine began doing extensive research on Henry Mack and the 57th USCT after seeing Mack's gravestone at the Fort Snelling National Cemetery.  He scoured old newspapers and interviewed north Minneapolis  residents who recalled him as the "Old Soldier."

According to Chicoine, Henry Mack was known only as Henry picking cotton at an Alabama plantation.  When the overseer threatened to whip his mother, Phoebe, for falling behind, Henry stepped in and took the beating himself.   That prompted their escape, a harrowing 300-mile trek across Mississippi to a Union camp in Helena, Arkansas.

No one gave Mack his freedom.  He seized it himself, despite dire consequences had he been captured.

He took the last name Mack and enlisted in the Union Army in early 1864.  When he boarded a ship on the Arkansas River, he waved goodbye to his mother, whom he'd never see again.

He and his regiment, the 57th USCT saw action in Arkansas and clashed with bushwhackers.  Gen. C.C. Andrews, a former Minnesota legislator, said later that they served with "a cheery appearance and willing spirit" and "proved good soldiers."

--Old Secesh

Born a Slave, Henry Mack, Union Veteran-- Part 2: Member of the 57th USCT

 Henry Mack credited his long life to abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.  And local newspapers credited him as being the country's oldest Civil War veteran when he died in 1945 of pneumonia.

He took his last breath at the Minneapolis Veterans Hospital on April 8, 1945, the eve of the day that Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Grant eighty years earlier.

Most of Mack's life was spent in Arkansas, Kansas and  Nebraska, he moved to Minnesota in the early 1920s and spent his last two decades in Minneapolis as a fixture at parades and patriotic events.

"Henry Mack's regular presence at public gatherings ... served as a reminder to the people of the Twin Cities of the past role of the African Americans in the defense of the  nation and their willingness to serve,"  wrote Steve Chicoine in the "American Legacy," a magazine devoted to black history.

Chicoine, 70, says Mack's headstone at Fort Snelling caught his eye because it had the Civil War's recessed shield and was well preserved.  He began doing extensive research on Mack and his Civil War unit, the 57th United States Colored Troops (USCT).

--Old Secesh

Born a Slave, Henry Mack Served in Union Army and Lived to Be 107-- Part 1

From the January 30, 2021, Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Former slave, Civil War vet lived final decades in Minneapolis" by Curt Brown.

The picture shows him at the age of  104 in 1941.  Five Civil War veterans were honored at the Third Annual Good Will dinner at Post 166 Jewish War Veterans.  He is bottom row, right.

Grave No. 384 in Section A-3 commemorates one of the most remarkable lives among the 240,000 military and family members buried  at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

This is the grave of Henry Mack, an escaped slave, Civil War veteran who lived to be 107.  He died in 1945 and was buried in the area where early black veterans were interred.

Mack was born into Alabama slavery sometime between  1836 and 1838 according to pension records.  Newspapers later settled on 1837 for his birth year.

"I only know my birthday being July 4th as having been told by my parents and master," Mack said in a 1912 interview.  "He concluded:  "I am 75 years old and past."

At age 100 in 1937, he was described as being in great shape for a man of his age.  The Minneapolis Star-Journal reported in 1941 that Mack, at 104, was "trim, alert, conversational," a busy man" with little time for reminiscing" given his schedule as a "patriotic instructor" and one of the last members of the Civil War veterans group, the Grand Army of the Republic.

--Old Secesh