Nelson W. Jordan was born around March 15, 1845, near Howardsville, Virginia, to Reuben Jordan and Deliha Lilly Brook. As he later explained, he had “no public record of my birth,” but his “mother and father told me I was born about the 15^th of March.” He had at least three brothers, including William Jordan and Irwin Jordan, but the family was separated by the domestic slave trade and wartime upheaval. His enslaver, George E. Booker, sold him when he was “young,” and by the early 1860s, he was probably working as a farm laborer near Corinth, Mississippi.

He fled to Union lines during the Civil War, and he worked as a cook for the 7^th Kansas Cavalry from 1862 until early 1863. Then, on May 2, 1863, he enlisted in the Union army. He mustered in as a private in the 1^st Alabama Infantry (African Descent), which eventually became the 55^th USCT Infantry. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 7 inches tall, with black hair and gray eyes. He was promoted to corporal on May 21, 1863, but he was reduced to the ranks on June 27, 1864.

The regiment served on garrison duty in Corinth, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee, and it took part in the Battle of Brice’s Cross Roads. He was wounded in the leg in 1864 and spent at least two weeks on crutches. The army transferred the regiment to Louisiana in February 1865, and he accidentally shot himself in the hand that October. He mustered out on December 31, 1865.

After the war, he held a series of short-term jobs in Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was baptized in 1868, and he began preaching while he was living in Chattanooga. He moved to Prince Edward County, Virginia, in the early 1870s. He was ordained as a minister in 1874, and he attended Richmond Theological Seminary from 1876 to 1877. He settled in Hampton, Virginia, and he became a prominent Baptist minister there.

He married Caroline Walker on June 19, 1878, and they had at least eleven children: Irving, born on May 19, 1879; Mittie, born around 1879; Julia, born on December 31, 1880; Delphia, born in January 1883; Anna, born on December 20, 1884; Nelson, born on December 27, 1886; Walker, born in December 1888; Arthur, born around 1891; Elsie, born around February 1894; Joseph, born on September 22, 1896; and Elizabeth, born on February 14, 1900. His son Irving died in July 1880. He eventually reunited with his brothers William and Irwin, who lived in Belmont, Ohio, and he continued searching for his third brother until at least 1890.

The family moved to Farmville, Virginia, around 1889. He applied for a federal pension in April 1888, and (after a series of rejections) he began receiving $8 per month on April 3, 1897. In the ensuing years, he advocated for pension increases, filing additional claims and contesting every rejection. As a result, his pension gradually rose to $72 per month by May 1922.

Jordan was also a staunch supporter of education. In 1906, he contributed $3 to support the Farmville school system; three years later, he contributed another dollar. He also served as president of the board of trustees of the Keysville Mission Industrial School. In May 1909, he urged the community to support a “little school located at Spout Springs.” He explained that “its not safe for us or our neighbors to allow our children to remain in ignorance. We feel that the hope of the race lies in the training of the young, the teaching of the right principles.” He added that “We hear the cry daily, we must make our race better. I know of no better way than by an intellectual, spiritual, and moral uplift of those who are to take up this unfinished work.”

He retired around 1917 “on account of a failure in his voice.” He died of “chronic interstitial nephritis” in Farmville on August 26, 1922.

Image: Nelson Jordan (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)