Biographical Profile of Pvt. Randall Edelen, 125th U.S. Colored Infantry
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
Affidavits
Mary X Edelen, Civil War widow
Them make me scratch out a X
in ink with two witnesses
on afta-Davids
to prove me and Randal was married.
I fetched afta-Davids
from every doctor still living
that examined
my husband’s piles
and old man’s bladder,
witnessed his pain,
and still doubted his suffering
while he rot from the inside.
Them even bade me make my mark
afta-David
with more witnesses
to prove my Randal was dead and gone.
They made me X the page
with witnesses so many times
on so many pension papers
that though I can not read
or write a lick,
I come to recognize
my own name when I see it.
The fancy M on Mary come to look like
a woman keep changing her mind.
And the E them like to put on Edelen,
a tired old bitty in a bonnet
who done set herself down an quit.
I first think my mark look like
a tired ol’ cross,
but after a while I come to see
a long sharp knife
like my Randal’s old scabbard from de war.
Affidavits
By Frank X Walker
From his book Load in Nine Times
Frazier History Museum
Louisville, Kentucky
October 8, 2024
If you choose to purchase Load in Nine Times at amazon.com through the link provided, Reckoning will earn a small commission.
Grove
Photo of Troops outside
the Colored Soldiers Barracks,
Camp Nelson
This was the first time
we really look at each other
and not be able to tell
who master the cruelest
who sorrow the deepest
who ground been the hardest to hoe.
We was lined up like oaks in the yard
standing with our chins up,
proud chests out, shoulders back,
and already nervous stomachs in.
We was a grove wanting to be a forest,
ready to see what kind of wood we made from.
The only thing taller or straighter
than us be the boards
holding up the barracks at our backs,
though most our feets feel pigeon-toed
and powerful sore
from marching back and forth, every day,
for what seem like more miles
than we walked to get here.
It take more than pride to stand still
’neath these lil’ hats not made for shade.
Soldiering ain’t easy, but it sure beats
the bloody leaves off a bondage.
Checkout Time
Randall X Edelen, Company G,
125th U.S. Colored Infantry
It was good money
if you lived to collect it.
I was luckier than most.
It took a strained back
to slow me down enough
to catch one a them fevers
that travel through camps
with bad water
and not enough clean places to shit.
More of us catched the runs
an died from disease
in hospital beds than from bullets.
When I had the cholera
they mark me present, but sick.
When I catched the bloody flux
they mark me present, but sick.
Somehow, I survived, though it costs
Me my livelihood.
It costs many more men their lives.
This is what them mean
when they say freedom ain’t free.
Mother May I?
Randall X Edelen, Company G,
125th U.S. Colored Infantry
Took almost four years
and a whole lot a dead, white bodies
to figure out they needed Kentucky
to win the war.
In March of ’65 the gov’ment
said joining the Union Army
guaranteed freedom for each new soldier
and our families too.
Come April, I found my way to Lebanon
an signed my mark in ink for my Mary
and our John, Susan, William, Sallie,
Daniel, Scott, and Silas.
I’m sure Miss Jane felt like
she been robbed
losing nine slaves all at once
with the power of my X.
I know she had some unkind words
for good ol’ Lincoln and the Gov’nor
who only offered her $300
for what them called compensated
’mancipation.
Knew she’d be fit to be tied so,
I didn’t ask.
I enlisted without consent.
Coming of Jubilee
It might look like we standing
on solid ground,
but we got all our feets on faith,
not in a country or a president,
but in the belief
that waiting on the other side
of whatever the Lord see fit
to put in front a us
be a chance to be free.
We ain’t running away
to find freedom for our families,
but marching toward it
—with guns in our hands.
It might look like we standing
on solid ground,
but we got all our feets on faith,
not in a country or a president,
but in the belief
that waiting on the other side
of whatever the Lord see fit
to put in front a us
be a chance to be free.
We ain’t running away
to find freedom for our families,
but marching toward it
—with guns in our hands.
Penmanship
Mary X Edelen, Civil War widow
i woulda knowed
who longhand was who
even if I didn’t see ’em
scratch out they names
on the paper
to swear my X is mine.
my William be proud,
like his daddy
he address his letters as pretty
as he dress his self.
his ink ease off the quill
just as smooth
as words off his tongue,
but my Scott and his letters
seem to take the long way
’round, make big slow loops,
and care not if they spine
stand up straight or not.
my Will glides ’cross them lines
like they pretty hardwood floors
while my Scott,
more accustom to dirt,
seem half ’fraid to touch ’em.
Frank X Walker
Danville, Kentucky native, multidisciplinary artist and educator, Frank X Walker, is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He is the author of the children’s book, A is for Affrilachia, and thirteen collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, which won the Lillian Smith Book Award, Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride, which he adapted for stage, earning him the Paul Green Foundation Playwrights Fellowship Award, and his latest, Load In Nine Times.
Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. His honors include a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, two Denny C. Plattner Awards for Outstanding Poetry, West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, as well as fellowships and residencies with Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Kentucky Arts Council. In 2020 Walker received the Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Kentucky, Transylvania University, Spalding University, and Centre College. He serves as Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.
More information can be found at FrankXWalker.com
