Woman believed to be last remaining widow of US civil war soldier dies

Helen Viola Jackson was just 17 when she married James Bolin, a 93-year-old veteran, in Missouri in 1936

Helen Viola Jackson's 1936 marriage to James Bolin was unusual to say the least: he was 93 and in declining health, and she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl.

Bolin was also a civil war veteran who fought for the Union in the border state of Missouri. Jackson was almost certainly the last remaining widow of a civil war soldier when she died on 16 December at a nursing home in Marshfield, Missouri. She was 101.