Curtis King, the Oldest Soldier

This marker remembers Curtis King, believed to be the oldest man ever to enlist in the United States Army. Born in Culpeper County, Virginia, in seventeen eighty-three, the son of a Revolutionary War veteran, King was eighty years old when he mustered into Company H of the Thirty-Seventh Iowa Infantry in November of eighteen sixty-two.

That regiment was called the Greybeards, made up of men over forty-five. Iowa was the only state to form one. King was turned down twice, partly because he was blind in one eye, before finally being accepted. Standing six foot two with grey hair and blue eyes, he was called one of the most efficient men in his regiment. Discharged in March of eighteen sixty-three, he died four months later, leaving twenty-one children, the youngest just fifteen months old.