Isaac Brock, age 53, Private, Capt. Harvy A. Wallace's Company, Waterhouse, Jr.'s Regiment Vols.*, enlisted May 10, 1862 in Rusk County, by Harvey A. Wallace for three years or the war, no further records**

* This company subsequently became Company H, 19th Regiment Texas Infantry

** He was listed only on the May 10, 1862 Muster-in roll of Company H. He was not on the subsequent muster rolls for the company, the next for the period May 10 to July 1, 1862. I suspect that his true age was appraised and he was shortly dropped from the rolls.

M323: Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas

*******************************************************

Isaac Brock

Residence China Spring TX; a 74 year-old Blacksmith.
Enlisted as a Private
"H" Co. TX 19th Infantry (Enlisted in 1861)
Other Information:
born 1/3/1787 in North Carolina
died 9/3/1909 in China Spring, TX
Buried: China Spring Cemetery, China Spring, TX

After the War he lived in China Spring, TX

Sources used by Historical Data Systems, Inc.:

- Index to Compiled Confederate Military Service Records
- Research by Brian Heintzelman
(c) Historical Data Systems, Inc. @ www.civilwardata.com

NOTES:

The following was submitted by: Brian Heintzelman

This soldier lived past the age of 122, entered the civil war at the age of 74, is
buried in China Springs, TX. A couple of references. I've seen his grave, there's a
historical marker there with his age and some of the information in this article. You
might find it interesting reading.

Taken from The Waco Tribune Herald
Dated Saturday, January 9, 1971.

MAC ARTHUR WOULD HAVE BEEN PROUD

Old Soldier Spanned Three Centuries
By Ernie Makovy
Staff Writer

The tombstone... you can barely read its writing:

"Issac Brock. Born March 1, 1787. Died September 3, 1909. Aged 122 years, 6 months and
2 days." Now the famous words: Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.

Brock never lived to hear Gen. Douglas MacArthur utter that news. But had known, he
would have known it was truth, wisdom and prophesy. For Brock was an old soldier,
turned down by the Confederate Army in 1861 at the age of 74, but one who was later
hired by another man as an Army blacksmith.

He was more than just a soldier, though. He loved horses and wouldn't ride them to town
because he wanted to save them. He was also a pretty sprite old man, marrying an 18 year
old girl in 1851 at the age of 64 and then fathering 12 children.

That was his second marriage. Little is known of his first wife, except that she bore
him four children and died at an early age.

And even when he was well past the 100 year old mark, Brock considered a
35 mile hike from his China Spring home to Waco nothing more than a casual
stroll. He made his last such hike when he was 120 and he probably would
have made more if he hadn't gone blind.

Even the fittest of today's generation may find those stories hard to believe. But
they're true, as are several others.

At one time in his younger days, Brock hiked to Texas from North Carolina, where he
was born, and twice when he was in his 80's he got into fights.

Old-timers recall one was with his some 80 odd year old landlord, John McCann and
had been over a political argument. The other was with a much younger man named Grandger.
No need to say who won them. With his high temper went other characteristics:
generosity, kindness, energy and skill.

The late Mrs. Sallie Ballard, one of Brock's 16 offspring used to say he was
"always doing something for other people." But he never forgot his own family.
"He made all the furniture we ever had," Mrs. Ballard once recalled of her father.
"He carved the chairs out of wood and made seats of hickory bark for them, over in
East Texas. He made his own plows, too. I remember watching him break the ground with
those plows hitched to a yoke of oxen."

When Mrs. Ballard, who was born during the Civil War, was eight years old, she walked
with the rest of the Brock family from Smith County, near Tyler, to their new home at
China Spring.

They walked because Brock had loaded the oxen-drawn wagon with house hold
goods, including the hickory- bottomed chairs. "Papa traded his land in Smith County
for two yoke of oxen, a wagon and two mares," Mrs. Ballard recalled several years ago.
"We moved to McLennan County with them. I don't know how long it took, I can't remember.
We camped out by the way."

But Brock was a fast walker, and he always used his horses to draw wagon
loads of cotton to town instead of riding them. "When he had cotton to take to town,
he would let the boys load it on the wagon, tell them to come on when they got it ready.
He'd walk ahead and make arrangements. When they got to town, there he would be,"
Mrs. Ballard said. Brock wasn't rich; in fact he was down
right poor. He couldn't write his own name and he never went to school a day in his
life. Somehow, he always had enough to feed his family, though, Mrs. Ballard said.

One of the most unique traits about him is that he is one of few people who could ever
say they lived in three different centuries, the 18th, 19th and 20th.

He was born in the North Carolina mountains in 1787, the year the constitutional
convention was assembled to lay the ground floor for the United States of America.
He was two years old when George Washington became the first president of the United
States.

In the Carolinas he learned coal mining and became a mighty hunter, bringing to mind
Mrs. Ballard's story of how Brock once provided deer and other wild meat for an entire
Tar Heel community of 14 families.

He hunted with a flintlock musket, carried a large powder horn on his shoulder and
used a miner's lantern as a "shiner" to blind the game. From North Carolina he made
his way to Texas in 1820, 33 years old and still a bachelor, a time 16 years before the
Texas Revolution. What part he played in that revolution, if any, is not known.
Eventually he made it to Tyler, married and had four children before his wife died.
By 1851 he was in Central Texas and married Miss Sarah Sparks, an 18 year old girl
from Alabama. He was 64 at the time and in the next 16 years he fathered 12 children,
all of whom are now dead.

After his marriage, Brock made his home on the old Bill Davis farm at China Spring,
a farm located on the south side of the Bosque River and across the river from China
Spring.

Brock and his family tried the city life in Waco for a while, then moved to Hood County
and up into the Indian territory for a few year before returning to McLennan County.

He died in this county and he died rather swiftly, being active right up to the end.
Exactly what caused his death isn't known, except that is wasn't from any lingering
illness.

Near the end, Brock wasn't even sure of his own birthday, so Mrs. Ballard wrote to
North Carolina to find out. The reply was March 1, 1787.

He was buried in the China Spring Cemetery, his tombstone a tall gray maker bearing
the inscription: "He died as he lived, a Christian."

But MacArthur would have said the old soldier didn't die. He just faded away.

Isaac Brock fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy. He was in Company H,
19th Texas Infantry, Private Captain Harvey A. Wallace's Company; Water House Jr.,'s
Regiment Volunteers. He entered the Confederate Army as a Blacksmith age showed as 53,
but in fact he was 67 years old. One newpaper article quoted that he gave them the
wrong age so he could get in.

HANDBOOK OF WACO AND McLENNAN COUNTY, TEXAS
Texian Press 1972

"Issac Brock was born in Bunbcombe County, NC on March 1817 and lived in that area
until 1823 when he went to Georgia to work in the Gold Mines. He remained in Georgia
for four years, then went to Dekalb County, Alabama where he apprenticed himself to a
blacksmith. Two years later he open his own shop. In 1837 Brock married Lucinda
Carolina Hill in Dekalb County, Alabama, he sold his shop and moved to Texas, settling
at Rusk County, Henderson, Texas.

After the death of his first wife in 1849 he remarried Sarah Jane Sparks in 1852.
He was the father of 16 children. In the 1850's he lived at Waco where he had a
blacksmith shop near the old ferry. About 1858 he moved back to East Texas and in
1861 at the age of 74, he entered the Confedeate Army as a blacksmith aaand served
4 years. After the civil war, he returned to Mclennan County and settled
on the north side of the North Bosque.

Brock died at Chin Spring on Sept 3, 1909 at the age of 122 yeers 6 months, 2 days.
His live span covered 3 centuries- the 18th, 19, 20th - and the election of every US
President from George Washington to William Howard Taft.