This a chronological list of the last surviving veterans of military insurgencies, conflicts and wars around the world.
Most cases are questionable, though it should be remembered that many Confederate records were destroyed or lost to history.
However, in September 1959 an exposé by The New York Times revealed that he was in fact born in 1854 in Itawamba County, Mississippi, and not 1842 as claimed.
Still, since John B. Salling and all the other claimants were dead, Williams was celebrated as the last Confederate veteran after his death on 20 December 1959.
Although in 1900 Salling supplied a birthdate of March 1858, he appears to have been born around 1856, still too late to have served in the Confederate Army.