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ALEXANDER MACK (aka ALEXANDER DEARY)
Company "E"


OBITUARY

Submitted by Heidi J. Oliver Schmidt

The Wheeling News-Register, Tuesday, July 29, 1930

Alexander Mack, Aged Civil War Veteran Passes Away:
Was One of the Last Survivors of General Custer's Command.

     Alexander Mack, 83, veteran of the Civil War and one of the last survivors of General Custer's famous command, passed away at 11 o'clock yesterday morning in the home of his daughter Mrs. Bessie Oliver, 311 Clay Street Martins Ferry. He had been ill for eight months and bedfast for the last six months of that period.
     The body was taken to the Vincent Keller funeral home, West Hanover Street and last evening was returned to the Oliver home where funeral services will be conducted, probably Wednesday afternoon. Interment will take place in Riverview Cemetery.
     Mr. Mack was born in Wheeling August 2, 1846. When only a youth he enlisted in the Union army, serving with the First West Virginia Cavalry until the end of the conflict. Later he served with General Custer in the skirmishing with Indians in western states but was not with the troop that was ambushed by Sitting Bull. Some years later he was the recipient of a medal, presented by Mrs. Custer, widow of the general, to the surviving members of his command. In after life he became a civil engineer.
     Besides his daughter, Mrs. Oliver, with whom he made his home, he leaves two other daughters, Mrs. Thomas Webb, of Wilmerding, Pa., and Mrs. Louis Foertch, of Rochester, Pa., also a son, Harry Mack, of Coshocton. Another son, George, died last April but the news of his death was never given to the father, even then in a critical condition.
     He was a member of the Knights of Malta. Practically his entire life, after severing connections with the army, had been lived in Martins Ferry with the exception of brief residence with his comrades in the soldiers' home in Sandusky.
     In later years, when applying for a pension, he experienced some difficulty in obtaining it due to the fact he had enlisted under an assumed name.


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