Luke Martin Jr.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Luke Martin Jr., the son of an ex-slave and Civil War Union soldier, has died — 179 years after his father was born.

Martin was 97 when he died Sunday at his home in New Bern, North Carolina, said his daughter, Fannie Martin-Williams. Her father, who suffered from congestive heart failure and other ailments, had been in declining health for several months, she said.

“He had a long, full life,” Martin-Williams said of her father, with whom she lived in the house where he was born — a house his father built in the 1890s. “He enjoyed every minute of it.”

Martin had little memory of his father, Luke Martin Sr., who died at age 84 in 1920 when the son was just a few years old, according to Martin-Williams. The elder Martin, who was born in 1836, was married twice, the second time to a much younger woman.

According to multiple historical references, Luke Martin Sr. was enslaved at a plantation near Plymouth, North Carolina, but escaped and became a member of the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, later called the 35th U.S. Colored Troops. The U.S. Colored Troops were established in 1863 and by the end of the Civil War, black soldiers comprised 10 percent of the Union Army.

The son was a master brick mason, contractor and teacher. He served as one of the lead brick masons at Tryon Palace, North Carolina’s first permanent state Capitol. He also worked as a funeral attendant at Oscar’s Mortuary from 1960 until August.

In recent years, Martin Jr. had received multiple accolades, including the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina’s highest civilian honor.