Major Nelson
Submitted by Richard McCormick 15
August 2020
"I am working on a project to identify as many
Civil War vets who were born in, lived in, died in or are buried in Campbell
County as I can find. This is Major Nelson's Freedman's Military
Record." Richard McCormick
From the Freedman's Bureau records for Major Nelson.
I first saw him in the Campbell County Ky 1890 Veterans Schedule. That list
places him in the 114th Ky Infantry, but no unit by that name existed. There
was, however, a 114th United States Colored Troops Regiment, and that unit did
have a soldier named Major Nelson in Company D.
The Genweb site lists Major Nelson in a list of burials in Evergreen in 1895. A
third place on the Genweb is a list of deaths in Newport in 1895. This one
refers to him as “colored.”
He is listed as a Pastor at Corinthian Baptist African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Newport for 1888-89.
The death and burial records and Findagrave list him as being born in Virginia
on 1825, the son of James. This is where I found some confusion. Records on
Fold3 say he was 44 years old when he enlisted in 1865, giving him a birth year
of about 1820. This site also says he was born in Adair County, Kentucky, and
that his owner when he enlisted was James Dear of Mercer County, Ky.
Major Nelson's pension card on Ancestry and Family Search shows the 114th USCT as his unit, was filed 11 Feb 1892 in Kentucky. It also shows that the widow’s pension was filed 29 January 1896, just weeks after his 25 Dec 1895 death. That timeline makes sense and the card shows his widow as Eliza. An Evergreen record on the Genweb shows a “Mrs. Eliza Nelson” as owner of Lot 7 N1/2 In section 10, with a “Mager Nelson” buried there in April 1896. It looks like “Major was misspelled and matches his burial place in the record mentioned above. Also, a 1902 Newport City directory on ancestry lists Eliza Nelson and shows Major Nelson as her spouse, but the 1900 census shows “Elisa” as being a widowed pensioner who was born in Virginia in 1808, quite a few years before Major Nelson
My guess is that James Dear may have been the “James” that the burial record
mentioned. The difference in the ages may be due to nobody in his family knowing
it when he died and just guessed he was 70 years old. Or maybe he gave a guess
at it when he enlisted. His family may have also guessed at his birthplace too.
The enlisted and discharged dates on the 1890 veterans schedule are also
different than the fold3 records.
Maybe there are other reasons for those differences, and perhaps
there was a white man veteran named Major Nelson in Newport in 1890, but he
listed a non-existent unit, so it seems to me that the Major Nelson of Newport
was likely the same Major Nelson in Co. D of the 114th USCT.