Edward (Edwin) Mady was born December 13, 1897, in Lexington, Missouri to parents Matthew and Carrie Gates Mady.
Edward served in World War I with Floyd Lacy as part of the 317th Sanitary Train. The unit was organized October 29, 1917, at Camp Funston, Kansas. The officers and enlisted men were from all over the United States and received medical training. Before leaving for France in 1918, they received the name “Buffalo Soldier Division” as a tribute to the four Buffalo soldier regiments that fought in the regular US Army in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Edward and his unit shipped out of Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1918, on the ship Great Northern. Upon arrival at France, the soldiers were greeted warmly by the French citizens. This treatment was far different from what they had received in the United States. The 317th served in mobile hospitals, the last being near the front at the Argonne Forest. Floyd left Brest France on February 18, 1919, arriving back in New York on February 24 aboard the Olympic.
On May 19, 1922, he married Viola Harden. He worked as a coal miner.
Tragically he died September 28, 1926, in Lexington, Missouri at age 28, the victim of a homicide.
(Thanks to Bill Sellers for the photograph of Edwin Mady, and to Bill Wealot for the photograph of Edwin’s headstone)