After the Civil War, thousands of formerly enslaved men applied for noncombatant, confederate pensions. From Virginia to Texas, they served the Calvary, the Infantry, and the Light Artillery regiments of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.).
Without these noncombatants, the C.S.A. would have ceased to exist long before April 9th, 1865. In Mississippi alone, black men and women filed more than seventeen hundred pension applications. As servants, they served in a variety of roles, as: blacksmiths, breastworks laborers, cattle drovers, cooks, horseshoers, hospital attendants, hostlers, iron workers, message boys, musicians (buglers and drummer boys), nurses, railroad laborers, salt makers, shoemakers, teamsters, waiters, and washers.
In Oktibbeha County, in particular, 42 freedmen lived long enough to apply for Confederate Pensions as indigent soldiers and Confederate Pensions as Servants between 1900 and 1934. I suspect that the number of men who actually served the Oktibbeha County’s C.S.A. was two or three fold.
One of those men, a man named Shep Danzy, was born between 1840 and 1846 to Edmond and Winnie Danzy. Shep Danzy of Oktibbeha County, MS, according to his APPLICATION FOR PENSION—FORM 3: SERVANT, was a hospital attendant and he served under Major John Green of Noxubee County, Mississippi, in Macon, Mississippi. After the war, Shep became a farmer, living just two doors away from an A.O. Green,a white merchant of dry goods. In 1872, he married Clara Hampton of Oktibbeha County. Over the years, they became the parents of several children.
In 1898, his daughter, Rebekar, married my great grand uncle, George Boyd,Sr., and they became the parents of seven children, including four boys, James, Shepherd, George, Jr., and L.C., who would live to adulthood. In 1934, Shep was predeceased by his beloved wife, Clara. About the same time, he applied for a Confederate Pension Application.
As I read question 20: ‘Give nature of your disability and destitution?’ my heart ached. Answer: “Old Age. Have nothing. Being fed by F.E.R.A.” As I looked at his photograph again, I thought about the hard life that he had lived and I wished that he were with us today. I thought about my cousins—his great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Three and four generations later, did they even know the importance his life had made in our history.
And, what would they say when he asked “Do you know my name?”
