By Brent Engel

Contributing writer

He loved the ladies, whiskey, chewing tobacco and good conversation. A Pike County native who left the Confederate army due to illness ended up living longer than any of his Missouri comrades – and just about everyone else who fought in the Civil War. John Thomas Graves was born at what is now Eolia on New Year’s Day 1842. The last of the state’s rebels, he died of heart failure at age 108 on May 9, 1950. The Graves family was one of many in the Prairieville neighborhood with Southern sympathies. His Virginia-born father, James, was a miner, farmer and tobacco plantation overseer.

At the outset of war, Graves joined a Confederate company commanded by Harvard-educated John Bullock Clark Jr., the son of a U.S. Congressman. He and other soldiers joined Gen. Sterling Price for a huge battle at Lexington in September 1861. For Graves, the Confederate victory was short-lived. He was discharged for unspecified medical reasons in January 1862. Over the years, Graves would work as a farmer, store owner and construction contractor in addition to owning mines in the West. He and his wife, Addie Ann Ray Graves, had two sons. Five years after Addie died in 1924, Graves applied for residency at the Confederate Soldiers Home of Missouri, which opened through donations in 1891 at Higginsville.

The application was denied because Graves’ income was too high, but he finally was accepted in 1933. Women who visited were told to be on the lookout because Graves would plant a kiss on their cheeks if he got a chance. Staff once caught a 102-year-old Graves in the room of another veteran’s widow. Though toothless late in life, he remained nimble and energetic until almost the end. Birthdays were festive affairs.

“He took a bit of cake and ice cream, but did not let it spoil his daily round of eight highballs and huge fistfuls of chewing tobacco,” wrote author Richard A. Serrano.

Upon his death, Graves was buried in the home’s cemetery with more than 800 other soldiers and family members. The house was torn down, but the grounds were established in 1952 as the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. Pleasant Crump of Alabama is the last verifiable Confederate veteran. He died at 104 on Dec. 31, 1951. Albert Woolson of Minnesota, who passed at 106 on Aug. 2, 1956, is the last Union Army vet. Graves had followed America’s progress intently during World War II. He was particularly interested in the atomic bomb, which he called “the devil’s instrument.” Having participated in the nation’s most deadly war, the veteran had some advice.

“The best thing that all nations can do today is to let well enough alone to keep peace,” he said shortly before his last birthday.