Milan family shares History with 100 year old letter from WWI

By Jean Odom

Wallace Franklin Boulton was drafted into the US Army in August of 1918.  He boarded a train in Trenton, Tennessee and was never heard from again until the family received notice via telegram that he had died of influenza in a hospital in England while in service to his country some four months later.  His attending nurse would take the time a few months later to write to the family to tell of the circumstances of Boulton’s death and about the funeral services given to the fallen solider.

Boulton was born August 25, 1886 in Carthage, Tennessee to William Callicutt and Martha Frances White Boulton.  The family moved to the Milan area in 1902.  Boulton was one of 12 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood.  He was the second oldest of the surviving children and quickly adopted a leadership role at the family farm.

Boulton was a father-figure and mentor to his younger siblings. While never attending college himself, he encouraged his younger siblings to attend and 7 of those siblings took his advice and received college degrees.

Martha Lou Shelton, Boulton’s niece, remembers her father fondly remembering Boulton around the dinner table.

“I grew up in different times. We would sit around the dinner table after we finished eating and Daddy would tell stories,” Shelton remembered.  “Sometimes it would be 11pm and we hadn’t even cleared the table. We heard oral memories about everything sitting around that table.”

Boulton reluctantly agreed to serve when he was drafted in August of 1918.  He worried about his family and how the crops would be harvested while he was away at war.

Boulton never married, however at age 32, he was the most eligible bachelor around the area.  Shelton suspects he was too busy with family and work obligations to worry about marriage prior to being drafted.

Shelton’s father, Roe Boulton, told a story about chasing the train after his brother left for war, hoping the stop the train and keep his older brother at home.  Roe was born in 1899, and grew up looking up to Boulton as a mentor and father-figure.

Boulton never saw action during the war.  He contracted influenza on the trip from America to England and was sent to Oway Hospital in Paignton, Devon, England.  He died on September 30, 1918 at age 32.

The letter sent from an American Red Cross nurse who was serving in the hospital where Boulton was taken was the only information the family ever received about Boulton’s illness and death.

The family kept the letter at the old family homeplace in a frame next to a portrait of Boulton until the homestead burned in 1983.   The family says Boulton’s eyes would follow you in the parlor of the family home.  The room was later converted to a bedroom, but the portrait of their beloved brother remained.  When the family home burned, the Shoaf family gained possession of the letter.

The letter contained a flower from his grave and a description of the funeral services.  Boulton was buried in England.  The letter described the grave as “looking out over the sea.”  It also described the music played and explained that he was buried with full military honors, despite never seeing action during the war.

It was too expensive to have the body shipped back to America during the war, so Boulton was buried overseas until the War Department moved the body two years later to Arlington National Cemetery.

Shelton recalled taking her father to view Boulton’s grave in Washington DC some 70 years after he died during the war.

“We took Daddy to see Wallace’s grave on Veterans Day in 1975,” Shelton remembered.  “He grieved Wallace nearly 60 years before he saw the grave site in Washington.”

The family had the option to bring Boulton to Gibson County, however due to lack of funds the family decided to allow him to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  Most of the family has been to see the grave, but her grandparents never had the opportunity.

The farm where Boulton lived and worked is still in the Bolton family and is now a century farm.  The family treasures the memory of their fallen soldier.  Boulton was honored at the War Memorial at Milan City Park.

Special thanks to Martha Lou Shelton, Ruth Shoaf and Holt Shoaf for sharing their family’s story.