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Pvt. Randall Edelen
125th Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry
Born 1821, Washington County, Kentucky
Died April 29,1888,
Washington County, Kentucky
My 3rd Great-Grandfather on my mother’s side, Randall Edelen, was born in 1821 in Washington County, KY. He married Mary Edelen (Crouse) in 1842, and they had seven children (John, Susan, William, Sallie, Daniel, Scott, and Silas) together.
He enlisted in the Union Army at age 44 on April 12, 1865 “without consent” of his owner, Jane Edelen, a month after an act of congress guaranteed the emancipation of the families of all slaves who enlisted. He also had the additional incentive of earning a $100 bounty and $300 total at the completion of three-years of service for volunteering.
Though stricken with sickness and injury numerous times during his service, he completed his full tour of duty. He served as a private in Company G of the 125th Colored Infantry and after several illnesses, including cholera and acute dysentery, was assigned daily duty as a cook until being mustered out on October 31, 1867.
He and Mary had an additional child, Addie, in 1870, and when not too infirmed, he worked as a blacksmith and was listed in the 1870 and 1880 Census as such.
According to his very extensive pension files, he suffered from significant health complications during the last years of his life that included a back injury suffered attempting to move a box of blacksmith tools that may have fallen into a swollen Rio Grande River while serving in the USCT in Fort Bliss, Texas. His files indicate that he was also diagnosed with piles, prolapsus ani, cystitis, lymphoma, cholera, dysentery, acute rheumatism, and eventually died on April 29, 1888, from Uremic Poisoning, which is a consequence of kidney failure.
Author’s Note
The Edelen family’s challenges that were documented in 90 pages of pension files, military service records, census records, and Freedman’s bank notes, were simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking to read. The most moving part was getting to see Mary Edelen, my 3rd Great-great grandmother’s mark on multiple documents and most powerfully on the affidavit where two of her own children serve as witnesses. Seeing the X in place of her signature made the X, from a legal name change in my own name, even more significant. It was as if my ancestors had been speaking to me from across time.
The poems “Check Out Time,” “Affi-davits,” and “Mother May I” are persona poems in the voices of Mary and Randall Edelen, and they were inspired by these documents. Discovering that Randall Edelen “enlisted without consent” was a reminder of the degree to which enslaved peoples resisted bondage and a point of pride to imagine all the subtle and outright ways my ancestors insisted on their own freedom. The poems “Grove” and “Coming of Jubilee” are ekphrastic poems inspired by the Camp Nelson photo that appears as the cover photo on the Kentucky U.S. Colored Troops Project web page.
Frank X Walker
Frank X Walker
The first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, Frank X Walker is Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he founded pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. He has published eleven collections of poetry, including his latest, Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems, Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded an NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Last Will, Last Testament, winner of the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of a Lillian Smith Book Award, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, which he adapted for stage. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker, a Danville native, coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. A Cave Canem fellow, his honors also include a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry.
More information can be found at frankxwalker.com
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