Starting The Journey

Simon Douglas

Simon Douglas (c. 1843–1950) was a former slave who lived to become the last American Civil War soldier in the state of New Jersey. Douglas was born in about 1843, as a slave on a plantation in Fairfield County, South Carolina. In 1862, during the US Civil War, he went to the front lines as a body servant for his masters' son, in the Confederate Army. Douglas became free by 1864 and moved north as a blacksmith and bummer (a nickname for foragers) of Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. In 1866, Douglas settled in what was to become Fairview, Bergen County, New Jersey. He married a local resident, with whom he had a son and daughter. He ran his own blacksmithing business into his 90s. He lived there until he died on March 8, 1950. He is interr… more »