Noland Veal was discharged from the U.S. Naval hospital ship Red Rover in 1865 and, like many Black veterans of the Civil War, made his way back to his hometown of Woodville, Mississippi. As a 16-year-old serving aboard a naval vessel, he had likely traveled the length of the Mississippi River—from Cairo to New Orleans—stopping at naval ports, encountering sailors and many other people from across the country, hearing their stories, and absorbing knowledge far beyond what was available to him in Mississippi. When the war ended, Noland and other returning soldiers and sailors brought that experience back with them. They married, raised families, and carved out new lives as free men, often supporting themselves through sharecropping and day labor.
As the federal pension system expanded after 1890, many aging veterans—including Noland—sought the support promised by the Pension Act. His identity, age, and origins became the focus of an extensive body of testimony. Witnesses from Holly Grove Plantation and the surrounding community came forward to confirm his birth, family ties, and early life in enslavement. These testimonies—given between the 1890s and early 1900s—form the foundation of the pension file.
The evidence gathered to prove that Noland was 62 years old in 1907 produced a flood of depositions, all estimating his birth between 1845 and 1848. His earliest documented pension activity includes a claim dated May 21, 1894, though he formally filed under the Pension Act of 1890 on March 15, 1899. Like many veterans, Noland’s pension examinations centered on his disabilities: chronic rheumatism, arthritis, dizziness, and the lingering effects of a severe head injury caused when he was struck on the head with a piece of lumber, a blow that caused lasting brain compression and required surgery. Pension files are, at their core, medical dossiers, and his was no exception.
Among the most interesting documents in the pension file is a letter dated April 20, 1908, written on Noland’s behalf to the Bureau of Pensions. In it, he attempts to anchor his birth date to a major historical event familiar to the local community:
“I was born at some date in 1845—prior to the date of the same year that Gen. Zachary Taylor left his home here in Miss., not more than 5 miles from the place of my birth, to defend the disputed territory between the U.S. & Mexico.”
Until reading this statement, I had not realized that future U.S. President Zachary Taylor—in office from March 4, 1849, until his death on July 9, 1850—was a landowner and slaveholder with deep ties to nearby St. Francisville, Louisiana, and Wilkinson County, Mississippi. He was also a business partner and associate of Judge Edward McGehee, owner of Bowling Green Plantation, located only about five miles from Holly Grove, where Noland was born.
Noland Veal’s pension file is more than an administrative record; it is a source that helps us understand Black life during the Civil War-era in Mississippi. It situates Noland—and the larger community of Black sailors from Wilkinson County—within the geography of the Mississippi River, the war, and its aftermath. This small cluster of sailors offers a focal point for studying how the Civil War unfolded along river towns and plantations, a subject I will explore in greater depth at another time.
Noland Veal’s pension file identifies a wide network of family members, neighbors, and community associates who provided testimony on his behalf. Those enslaved with him on Holly Grove Plantation included his parents, William Veal and Mary Brent/Veal; his sister, Kitty Veal Alexander; and fellow enslaved men Martin Hillary, Peter Jackson, and Lewis McField. The file also led me to military documents of formerly enslaved men who later served with Noland aboard the USS Kenwood: William Bell, Sterling Dumars, Washington Farrar, Andrew Hayden, Charles Jones, Willis Martin, Edward Sims, Richmond Veal, George Washington, and William Blayden. Additionally, Moses Wilson and his younger brother, Irvin Wilson—both formerly enslaved by John Irvin and later Robert Irvin—appear in the record. Taken together, these names represent interconnected family groups whose stories will be essential for future generations to understand and preserve.
The pension file reconnects Noland to his birthplace, Holly Grove Plantation. Although he fought for his own emancipation, his identity remained bound to the plantation’s community of formerly enslaved people, its relationships, memories, and shared history—preserved in the testimony of those who lived alongside him. That legacy shaped his post-war life and anchored him deeply within the Black community of Wilkinson County, Mississippi, not as a solitary veteran but as part of a larger collective memory.
