The following is part one of four excerpts from the book ” The Last Men of the Revolution” written in 1864 by the Reverend Elias Hillard
From Luzerne I proceeded to Syracuse, the home of the Rev. DANIEL WALDO, the most widely known of the surviving soldiers of the Revolution.
There were many circumstances which rendered the anticipation of a visit to him one of great pleasure and satisfaction. Known, as he was, to all his countrymen, all felt acquainted with him and interested in him; while his intelligence, his wide familiarity with men and events, and, until of late, the full possession and vigor of his faculties, with his eminently social disposition, the freshness of his feelings, and his undiminished interest both in the past and the present, combined to render an interview with him, in prospect, one of the rare privileges of a lifetime. Most painful, therefore, was my disappointment on reaching his house to find the realization of these anticipations forever forbidden; the communion of life, so pleasant and prolonged, forever terminated; its story, told so often and so willingly, to be told no more. The hour so long awaited at last had come. Death was dealing with the old man. Already he had done with earthly things; and, passed into the border realm between the seen world and the unseen, he was awaiting in passive unconsciousness the opening of those mansions in his Father’s house, where so long there had been prepared for him a home. Continue reading