William Henry Scholls

In 1919 a woman applied for a Confederate widow’s pension from the State of Florida. All she knew was that her late husband had served as a drummer boy in the Confederate Army. Unable to document her husband’s Confederate service, Florida officials denied her claim. So she contacted her husband’s brother, William Henry Scholls, who filed an affidavit on her behalf.

That document was discovered by the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery in 2008 while identifying headstones in the Naval Plot. It not only confirmed his younger brother’s service, but his own, in the Confederate States Marine Corps. Both were drummers.

The documents reveal the story of a veteran who was one of thousands of  Civil War soldiers who served on active duty during World War 1. Some sources claim 200,000 or more volunteered, but those who passed the physical test were too old for foreign service. The average age would have been around 70. (For the record, the last soldier of the Civil War to be buried here was Samuel Johnston in 1939, but that was the only war in which he served.)

Born in 1848 in New York City to Jacob S. and Bridget Sweeny Scholls, Bill grew up near Pensacola, Florida. His father was a US Marine Corps Sergeant in the Mexican War who became a Confederate Marine Corps Sergeant and died of heart disease in Richmond, Virginia in 1862.

Bill began his military career in March 1861 at the age of 13, enlisting as a drummer in the Confederate States Marine Corps, Company C, at Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia. His younger brother, James Lawrence Scholls, followed in 1863, enlisting also as a drummer (CSMC Company A) at the age of 11. The boys became men quickly, especially without the influence of their father.

Both “musicians” served throughout the war at Drewry’s Bluff, the headquarters of the Confederate Marines. At the end of the war, the last of the Confederate Marines and sailors, including the Scholls brothers, fought a last ditch battle at Sayler’s Creek, Virginia outside Petersburg. They found themselves surrounded and most were forced to surrender.

Of the 400 Confederate Marines, only 21 escaped to Appomattox to join up with General Robert E. Lee’s forces. Among them were the Scholls brothers. Both surrendered and were paroled at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 while they were still just teenagers.

They returned to Florida where Bill joined hands and hearts in 1872 with Prudence Williams in Pensacola. Together they raised two boys and a girl on his carpenter’s salary, but the lure of military life remained, and this time it was on the sea.

On July 1, 1890 Bill enlisted in the Navy where he remained for the next 30 years, including the short-lived Spanish-American War. At the start of U.S. involvement in World War I, he was 69 years old. (Another Civil War veteran buried here, Adolph Lowe, was the oldest Navy man on active duty in the First World War at age 77.)

Bill was Chief Master-At-Arms aboard the battleship USS Georgia. At the outset of war she was used for training; toward the end she brought soldiers back from France.

Chief Scholls decided to retire at Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1920. By then his drummer brother, his wife, and a son had died in Florida. In March of 1931 he moved to the U.S. Naval Home in Philadelphia, but lived there only a few weeks. He died at age 83 of chronic myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle).

Bill was the only veteran buried here who served in two other wars after the Civil War. Thus far, five other servicemen have been located who have served in three separate wars. They are:  John Guthrie, Patrick Reilly, Fred Bockstahler,  William Bauman and Fred Short.