## The Final Years at the Farm
In the last decade of her life, Walker returned to the family farm in Oswego where she had grown up and lived out her final years in a situation of increasing isolation.
She was in her 70s and 80s during this period, still active in writing and advocacy but no longer able to maintain the lecture circuit that had been part of her working life for decades. The specific character of her later years — who she was in contact with, what she was writing, how she spent her days — is not comprehensively documented in the publicly available record.
She fell on the steps of the Capitol in 1917, the same year the Medal of Honor was rescinded from the rolls. The fall injured her and may have contributed to the declining health of her final years. By the time of her death in February 1919, she had been dealing with the aftermath of the fall for nearly two years.
She died at her home on the farm, in her 86th year. The people who buried her did so in the black suit, with the American flag on the casket. The medal was with her.
The last act of her public story — the refusal to surrender the medal, the daily wearing of the decoration the Army had officially taken from her — was also the act that required no specific energy or advocacy. She simply did not give it back. For two years between the 1917 rescission and her 1919 death, she continued to wear the medal as she had worn it for fifty years. No court had the authority to take it, and no enforcement mechanism existed to compel its return. She kept it because it was hers.