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Michigan in the Civil War


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American Civil War Soldier

CHARLES NELSON NICHOLS

JULIUS WATERSTRADT
Gertie's Family

DEPOSITION: I
Deposition of: JULIUS WATERSTRADT
Case of: Charles N Nichols
Certificate #387.762, April 1900

On this 21st day of April, 1900, at 2 and 1/2 miles northeast of Wakelee, county of Cass, state of Mich., before me, H.L. Rothe, a special examiner of the Bureau of Pensions, personally appeared Julius Waterstradt, who, being by me first duly sworn to answer truly all interrogatories propounded to him during this special examination of aforesaid claim for pension, deposes and says:
  I am 76years of age; my post-office address is Wakelee, Mich.
I am a farmer.
  I came into this neighborhood, onto a place adjoining this, in 1860, and I became acquainted with Charles N. Nichols at that time.  I went into the Army in 1864, in Oct. and came home in Sept. or Oct. 1865.  I don't know whether Nichols had got home before I enlisted.  I don't remember about that, so long ago.  When I came home from the Army he lived eighty rods from me on a place of ten acres he owned here.  I could not say how long he lived here after the war.  He married a girl I knew and lived here after the war, and then he went north and then he was west, too.  I couldn't say whether he lived here five or ten years after the war.
  He worked for me before the war, but whether he worked for me after the war, I couldn't say.  He was a young, stout, healthy man before he went to war.
  How was his health after the war before he left your neighborhood?
  After he came home from the war I had very little occasion to be about him and it has been so long ago and my memory is getting short, I can't recall much about him then.  I don't know what, if anything, ailed him then.
  Do you know what has ailed him since he lived in Marcellus, ten years past?
  He has been complaining to me a good deal about his bowels and his heart and he said he had a breach.  He said the breach bothered him so as he was not able to do much of anything.
  Was he ever troubled with his lungs or throat?
  That I could not say.  He has been coughing more or less, but what caused his cough I could not say.
  Can you state whether he had rheumatism or lung trouble, or chronic diarrhea, or piles, or throat trouble before he went north?
  No; I can say nothing about his health then.  That is too long for me to remember.
  I have understood the questions and my statement, as read to me, is correctly recorded.
Deponent,  Julius Waterstradt