|
|
What can we learn about Felix Blue, and the Bleau dit Rossignal family, from Felix's Civil War pension file? |
.jpg)
The inch-thick pile of documents that is Felix Blue's photocopied pension file chronicles a third of a century of struggle by a poor, illiterate, underprivileged man of color against the federal government to get what was rightfully coming to him. Inside these cluttered administrative forms, alongside all the bureaucrats' stamps and initials and officious language, lies the story of a man who had served his country's flag honorably, became disabled three decades later, and for the next 35 years did battle with the federal government for his rights under the law.
The pension laws themselves were admirably progressive pieces of legislation. Born of the Progressive Era (ca 1895-1920), federal pensions for veterans of the Mexican and Civil Wars were important historically as the first federal government social welfare programs. In these pension laws lie the seeds of FDR's New Deal social welfare and Social Security programs of the 1930s and after, as scholars such as Theda Skocpol have shown. (detail of Felix Blue Declaration for Invalid Pension, 10 April 1896)
Thanks to the stream of demands by persnickety Pension Bureau bureaucrats, these pension papers also offer a wealth of information on Felix Blue's life, family, and community. Generating all these papers cost Felix and Margaret a great deal of toil and trouble. Each represents a small piece in the puzzle of a 39 year-long battle waged by Felix & Margaret Blue, with the help of their family & friends, to make their rightful claims as citizens.
|
Early Years (1848-1864)
Felix was born in St Paul, Minnesota, according to every reference in these documents. The dates and years vary. Most say December 18, 1846; some say November 18; others say 1848. In one especially honest response, he noted that he "does not know date or month when was born." Because older veterans received bigger monthly pensions (according to the string of pension laws after 1890), Felix Blue, like every other veteran, had an interest in pushing back the year of his birth.
If his sister Marguerite made her epic 600 mile foot journey in the autumn of 1847 (as related in the modern leather-stocking tale), and if Felix was born in St Paul, then the 1848 date makes the most sense. As we've seen, by 1850 Felix, his father, mother, and four siblings were ensconced in St Paul. Ten years later, in 1860, Felix (age 13) and his brother Aiken (age 15) were living on a farm in Anoka County with Marguerite & Bailey T. Baldwin and their family (see 1850 census and 1860 census).
|
|
Felix & His Brothers in the Civil War (1862-1865)
Felix enlisted in the US Army on February 2, 1864 -- probably at a few months shy of 16 -- and was honorably discharged on July 11, 1865, serving 16 months a private in Company H of the Eighth Regiment of the Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. This was the same company as his brother Ecan Ressenblue (Aiken Bleau dit Rossignal), and same regiment as their nephew Charles Mijigisi Bottineau. More on these relationships and Civil War experiences below.
|
|
Marriages and Families (ca. 1869-1926)
Felix Blue had two romantic partners in his life with whom he raised children: Josephine McClure Blue, from around 1870 to 1888, in and around the Twin Cities area, and Margaret LaDoux Blue, from 1889 until his death in 1926, on White Earth Indian Reservation in Becker County.
|
|
Marriage to Josephine McClure (ca. 1869-1889)
After the war, Felix returned to the Anoka-St Paul area and married Josephine McClure, an uprooted Red River Ojibwe-M้tis and the sister of Theodore and Pierre (Peter) McClure. (Theodore McClure, also a Civil War veteran, would later marry Lucy Baldwin, daughter of Bailey T. & Marguerite Baldwin.) The three McClure siblings were born in the second half of the 1850s of an Ojibwe-M้tis mother and an Irish father. After the Civil War all three settled near each other in Ramsey and Anoka counties. By 1870, Felix & Josephine had settled and began raising a family in Centerville, Anoka County -- with Carolina (Carrie) born in May 1870, as shown in the 1870 census and confirmed in these pension papers.
Josephine McClure appears three times in these papers. The first is in Felix's response to a circular of October 20, 1898. Here's a scan of the questions and his responses:
The confusion arises when he identifies her the second time: Josapene Ladue. "LaDoux" was the surname of his second wife, Margaret. He must have been confused, or not understood the question, or his scribe must have misunderstood his response. Clearly, while she was married to Felix, her name would have been Josephine Blue. The place of the marriage, Little Canada, probably refers to Centerville, Anoka County.
The same 1898 circular also asked Felix about his children. Here is the question and his response:
Felix's wording here is ambiguous, making it unclear whether the sequences of names and dates correspond. If they do, then Carie LaDoux was the firstborn in 1872 in Anoka County, followed by Mary (b. 1876 in St Cloud) and Daniel (b. 1879 in Minneapolis). "Carie" is very probably the one-month old "Carolina" in Centerville, Anoka County, shown in the 1870 census. It seems clear that these are Felix's children with Josephine McClure Blue, making their names and birthplaces as follows:
Felix and Josephine had another child, Adam Blue,
born May 5, 1872, according to the baptismal records of St
Anthony of Padua Church in Minneapolis. Adam must have
died before Felix filled out this 1898 form. Felix said that he and Josephine were married for 28 years. This is clearly wrong, since it would mean they divorced in 1898. Felix's correspondence with the Pension Bureau began in 1891. This document, and every subsequent one, shows him living in or near White Earth Indian Reservation in Becker County -- much closer to the Red River Valley than Minneapolis-St Paul. (There are two affidavits of 1904 that show him in Minneapolis; he probably came to see Bailey T. Baldwin who was on his deathbed at the time.) It thus seems likely that Felix & Josephine divorced in the late 1880s.
The second reference to Josephine McClure is in a moving 1926 letter from Felix's 81 year-old widow Margaret LaDoux to the Commissioner of Pensions, dictated to and scribed by her daughter Catherine LaDoux Cogger, seven months after Felix's death. As Margaret recalled of her late common-law husband of 37 years,
In another of his narratives, Felix recounted his movements from the end of the Civil War to the late 1880s:
On another form he declared he was "in St Paul Minn till about 1881, thence in Anoka Co till 1887 thence to Becker Co where now residing" (5 June 1912). Since these documents only begin in 1891, we have no direct evidence from the years prior to Felix's permanent move to White Earth. Despite a thorough search, neither he nor Josephine can be found in the 1880 census. |
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
|
Partnership with Margaret LaDoux (ca. 1889-1926)
After he and Josephine parted ways in the late 1880s, Felix moved out of the Twin Cities to White Earth Indian Reservation, where he took up with the widow Margaret LaDoux. He and Margaret lived together as common-law husband and wife for 37 years, from around 1889 until their marriage on May 16, 1926, four days before Felix's death. He evidently worked as a farmer and/or farm laborer, as indicated by his responses on various forms, and by two 1911 affidavits testifying how he was injured loading hay.
In a letter to the Pension Bureau of November 1926 (dictated to her daughter), the widow Margaret Blue recounted the circumstances under which she and Felix first began living together:
Her
account is refreshingly honest,
emphasizing
the practical reasons why she and Felix took up together.
Felix's desire for a home suggests his rootlessness
following his divorce from Josephine McClure. Part of
Margaret's "large family" is listed in the
1900 census:
Felix (age 51),
Margaret (age 53) and children
Catherine (19), Peter
(17), Angeline
(14), and William J Blue (11). In Margaret's telling, her first husband Julian LaDoux died in 1885. We know from other evidence that Felix & Margaret took up together around 1889. In that year Catherine would've been 8 years old, Peter 6, Angeline 3, and William J in his pregnant mother's belly. (Margaret's Blue's signature assigning power of attorney to M. Elliott Waggaman & Co., 19 Oct 1926) Larger historical forces doubtless contributed to Felix's lack of place to call "home" in the late 1880s, and, by implication, to this period of personal crisis in his life. In another essay it will be useful to situate Felix's personal trajectory within the context of the dispersal of the Red River M้tis from the 1870s, pushed out of their ancestral lands by a flood of Anglo settlers, and within the context of the formation of White Earth Reservation after 1889. Felix's marriage to Josephine and life as a farmer in Anoka and Ramsey Counties essentially failed, it seems. In the late 1880s, twenty-five years after mustering out of the Union Army, he abandoned Anoka-Ramsey-Hennepin counties and headed north to the newly created White Earth Indian reservation. Why? We don't know. We do know that Felix was well traveled. His Civil War experiences took him to Tennessee, North Carolina, and beyond. He also made at least occasional visits to Minneapolis from his home in White Earth, as seen in William C. Baldwin's affidavit of 2 December, 1905. Interestingly, this was the month of Bailey T. Baldwin's death (Dec 19). We're guessing that Felix was summoned to the Twin Cities by his sister-in-law Lucy Baldwin to attend to Bailey's final days. It was probably Catherine (as Catherine Cogger) who in mid-spring 1930 wrote the following letter to the Pension Bureau on behalf of her 86 year-old mother, describing the couple's long years together:
Thirty-seven years together -- common-law husband and wife since 1889. "She had a home, and he had not when she first met him. So she took him in." The same family lore Margaret told 3ฝ years earlier. It sounds like a good, solid match, born of necessity but evolved into mutual commitment, affection, and even love.
By early 1926,
as Felix's physical ailments
worsened, he seems to have known he was dying.
Affidavits multiplied
as the time of his death drew near. These documents of
April and May 1926 -- and especially his formal church
marriage four days before his death -- show a man putting his affairs in order,
hoping to leave a small legacy to his widow and grandson.
All to no avail, as it turned out, with Pension Bureau regulations working against the widow Margaret at every turn (the Bureau required her to have been formally married to Felix from 1905). After burying her husband, and despite valiant efforts by herself and her daughter, Margaret never got another cent from Felix's pension. (Pension Bureau "Section Eye" stamp on document terminating Felix Blue's pension payments after his death.) |
|
|
Relationships with Ecan Ressenblue & Charles Bottineau
Felix Blue, Ecan Ressenblue, and Charles Bottineau are described in these documents as boyhood chums -- growing up together, living in the same neighborhoods, serving together in the same regiment in the Civil War, and living near each other in White Earth for the rest of their lives. This was less than half true. In fact Ecan and Felix were brothers and Charles their nephew. Further, all three were illiterate, yet all three applied for and received pensions (files of Ecan and Charles forthcoming). They also testified repeatedly for each other in affidavits to the Pension Bureau.
Why lie about being members of the same family? Probably so they could testify in each others' behalf to the Pension Bureau, whose regulations dictated that affidavits from near relatives were not valid. If Felix and Ecan were brothers, why did they enlist under different surnames? Felix had a devilish time trying to establish his identity as Felix Blow, Civil War veteran. It took him four years to convince the Pension Bureau (1892-96), and they were still questioning it 16 years later.
We don't know, but we can suspect it was precisely so they could end up testifying for each other after the war, if it came to that. The Bleau dit Rossignals appear to have been remarkably canny about using different names under different circumstances. As Aiken Bleau later explained why he was officially listed as "Ecan Ressenblue,"
Ecan Ressenblue was known by as many as 13 different names. His sister Margaret used almost as many. Possessing multiple formal names seems to have comprised a kind of weapon among the Bleaus and their kin, a way to help get something back from a federal government that, in the bigger picture of supporting land-hungry white settlers, subsidizing railroads, facilitating the Red River M้tis diaspora, and undertaking the Indian Wars, had taken so much away. |
|
| Felix's Health from the 1890s It's tricky evaluating these documents with regard to Felix's health. Most obviously, as in all pension files, the claimant had an interest in making his ailments sound as debilitating as possible. Felix claimed to suffer numerous physical maladies, each of which was partially disabling. In response, the Pension Bureau required regular medical examinations, one (in 1923) specifically assigned to an "expert"; the dates of the medical exams for which we have records are:
|
|
The Question of Felix's Alcoholism or "Vicious
Habits"
|
|
|
The Blue Family in the White Earth Community Felix & Margaret Blue were embedded within a rich community life in White Earth, as evidenced by the number and diversity of people who served as witnesses on various documents. These folks can be reasonably interpreted as Felix & Margaret's friends and neighbors, and give a sense of the larger community in which they and their family lived: The following box offers a snapshot of this community of friends and family:
As can be seen, many of these folks had known Felix & Margaret Blue for decades. Joe Cogger, for instance, testified about Felix's farming injury, having been working with Felix in the hay field when it happened. The Coggers were half Ojibwe, according to the 1900 census. One of Joe Cogger's male relatives -- probably his son or brother -- married Margaret Blue's daughter Catherine. The Monchamps, Fairbanks, Connells, and others appear to have been among the Blues' closest friends and neighbors. Richwood and its environs shows every sign of having a richly integrated community life. |
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Bad Medicine from the Pension Bureau
In stark contrast to the White Earth community's
generosity of spirit in helping Felix
& Margaret Blue was
the.jpg)
Pension Bureau's utter lack of compassion. Judging from these records, in the 1920s
(under the administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover) the
Pension Bureau became positively mean-spirited, its ranks filled
with cold-hearted bureaucrats whose endless nitpicky demands show they had no real concern
for veterans or their families
-- or, at least for poor, illiterate, rural, "half-breed" veterans like Felix Blue and his wife, children, step-children, and
grandchildren. (Detail of "DROPPED"
stamp and "DEAD" stamps, positioned together in what appears
to be an intentionally disrespectful way, on a Pension Bureau document
whose last date is 8 Oct 1927, seventeen months after Felix Blue's
death)
The Pension Bureau's meanness of spirit is readily apparent in the pension files of Frank Lang and Bailey T. Baldwin, but it is transparent here. First Felix Blue had to prove he was the same person as Felix Blow, Civil War veteran of Company H of the 8th Regiment of the Minnesota Volunteers. It took four years to do it (1892-1896; the asset of multiple names could also be a liability.) Grudgingly allowing the increases mandated by law, Pension Bureau officials also deducted perceived over-payments, rejected applications, required medical examinations in faraway cities in the dead of winter, and forced Felix to hire an attorney to seek redress of his low payments compared to other pensioners.
Once we hit the 1920s,
the
florescence of bureaucratic stonewalling and obstructionism, the
proliferation of red-tape, is breathtaking. Perhaps the best example is the
Bureau's letter to Felix Blue of
March 26, 1926, six
days after his death, requiring, for the umpteenth.jpg)
time,
certification from a medical doctor regarding "the maximum
distance at which you can count fingers, whether you can see to avoid
furniture, and go about the house unattended; whether you use a cane,
and if so, as a guide or a support, and for what particular purpose a
regular attendant is needed" -- a single sentence that
required detailed answers to six separate questions!
(Detail of 8 May 1926 memorandum
by Geo. D. Fox, Medical Examiner, Medical Division, US Pension
Bureau, in the case of Felix Blue, twelve days before Felix's death,
requesting further information from claimant's doctor on the extent
of claimant's disabilities, a memorandum incorporated into a letter
of 26 May sent to claimant and received by his widow)
These instructions to a dead man from an organization whose files brimmed with extensive documentation on all these questions from a long train of doctors going back decades, exemplify the spirit of the Pension Bureau in these years. I have tried to capture this meanness of spirit by transcribing its letters as exactingly as possible, in all their horrific bureaucratic grandeur.
.jpg)
On top of this, the lawyers took their cut. Felix Blue, and later, his widow Margaret Blue, were both illiterate, and thus at the mercy of high-priced DC lawyers, who sometimes fleeced their unknowing clients by promising more than they could deliver. The best example here is M. Elliot Waggaman & Co. of Washington DC, a shark Margaret hired after Felix's death.
The law was crystal clear, at
least as later explained by "A.V.B." of the Pension Bureau's Widow
Division to
Margaret Blue in June 1930. This was three years after Elliott Waggaman
first filed his
brief for the widow Blue. For three years after filing the
paperwork, nothing happened. Until Margaret's May 1930 letter
to the commissioner of pensions. Now, in June, she learned that unless she could prove she & Felix
had been formally married since 1905, her claim would be invalid.
Federal law did not recognize her common-law marriage of 37 years.
M. Elliott Waggaman duly filed the paperwork nonetheless, collecting his
fees to fight what he
surely knew was a losing.jpg)
battle. (Notation on back of Invalid card summarizing
Pension Bureau letter of June 3, 1930 to Margaret Blue's daughter,
Mrs. K. Cogger, in response to her letter to the Commissioner of
Pensions of
28 April 1930; the summary
reads: "June 3/30 Blk for wid's pen sent Mrs. K. Cogger
and adv. unless wid was mar'd to sol. pr. to 6/27/05 no title.
A.V.B. Wid. Div."
The file ends in June 1930, in a letter stamped with the signature of Acting Commissioner E. W. Morgan, addressed to Mrs. K. Cogger, regarding her 86 year-old mother Margaret Blue's pension claim. The final line of the letter read:
". . . it would be useless to file the application."
Fittingly, this is the very last line in the 39 year-long correspondence between Washington DC and Richwood, Minnesota regarding Felix Blue's Civil War pension.
The sad part, of course, is not the behavior of the DC lawyers or the Pension Bureau, but the suffering it caused to Felix and his family, especially his widow Margaret LaDoux Blue.
Finally, despite the quantity of documents reproduced here, we've actually excluded a fair number, mainly divers notations and memos, most on card-type documents scribbled on and initialed by sundry administrators, examiners, referees, etc -- a bureaucratic potpourri that offers an even finer-grained portrait of Felix Blue's struggle to receive what was by law rightfully his and his family's.
|
Next Chapter: Felix Blue Pension File: The Documents
|