Category: Civil War Women

Wife of Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles Mary Jane Hale was born June 18, 1817, in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the daughter of Elias White Hale and Jane Mullhallan Hale. Her father graduated from Yale College in 1794, and practiced law in Mifflin and Centre Counties, Pennsylvania. Gideon Welles was born July 1, 1802, in Glastonbury, Connecticut. He was a member of the seventh generation of his family in America. His original immigrant ancestor, Thomas Welles, arrived in 1635 and was the only man in Connecticut’s history to hold all four top government offices: governor, deputy governor, treasurer, and secretary. Welles earned a degree at the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont. He studied law, but soon…

Wife of Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm Half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln, Emilie Todd Helm first came to the White House in December 1863, after the death of her thirty-two-year-old husband, Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm, in the Battle of Chickamauga. (Most of the children of their father’s second marriage sided with the Confederacy.) Emilie Todd was born November 11, 1836, daughter of Robert Smith Todd and Elizabeth Humpreys Todd of Lexington, Kentucky. She was born into a wealthy family with exceptional advantages in both education and culture, which was afforded to few ladies of her time. Emilie was 18 years younger than her half-sister Mary Todd Lincoln. Robert Todd was a prominent Lexington banker and patriarch of a growing…

Wife of Union General Benjamin Grierson Alice Kirk Grierson left a remarkably frank correspondence describing the problems of raising a family in the frontier army. Her letters were published by Shirley Anne Leckie as The Colonel’s Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson (1989). Alice Kirk, daughter of John and Susan (Bingham) Kirk, was born at Youngstown, Ohio, on May 3, 1828, the oldest of thirteen children. Alice’s father, a well-to-do merchant and real estate developer, was an abolitionist who participated in the Underground Railroad. Alice had the advantage of a good education at a female academy, and taught school in her hometown, as well as in Indiana and Illinois. Benjamin Henry Grierson was born on…

Wife of Union General George Thomas Frances Lucretia Kellogg was born at Troy, New York, on January 25, 1821. Frances’ mother, Abigail Paine Kellogg, had been a widow for many years. Her father Warren Kellogg was a prosperous hardware and grocery merchant. Image: General George Thomas George Henry Thomas was born July 31, 1816, on a farm called Thomaston in Southampton County, Virginia, five miles from the North Carolina line. He was one of nine children born to John and Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas. There were six girls and three boys; George was the youngest son. The family led an upper-class plantation lifestyle. By 1829, they owned 685 acres and 24 slaves. John Thomas died in a farm accident April 20,…