Category: Civil War Women

Civil War Women
Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Famous Firsts

Dorothea Dix and The Civil War

• Maggie

Founder of the First Mental Asylums in the U.S. Dorothea Dix Superintendent of Union Nurses Dorothea Dix was one of the most influential women of the nineteenth century. A noted social reformer, she also became the Union’s Superintendent of Nurses during the Civil War. The soft-spoken yet autocratic crusader spent more than 20 years working for improved treatment of mentally ill patients and for better prison conditions. Early Years Dorothea Lynde Dix, daughter of Mary and Joseph Dix, was born in the tiny village of Hampden, Maine, on April 4, 1802. Her father, an itinerant preacher and publisher of religious tracts, had married against his parents’ wishes. He had left their home in Boston to settle in what was then…

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Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Philanthropists

Clara Barton

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Civil War Nurse, Educator and Humanitarian Clara Barton – pioneer teacher, government clerk and nurse – is one of the most honored women in American history. She began teaching school at a time when most teachers were men. She was among the first women to gain employment in the federal government. Barton risked her life when she was nearly 40 years old to bring supplies and support to soldiers in the field during the Civil War. Then, at age 60, she founded the American Red Cross in 1881 and led it for the next 23 years. Childhood and Early Years Clara Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas day, 1821, in Oxford, MA, to Stephen and Sarah Barton. Clara’s father was…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Isabella Fogg

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Civil War Nurse from Maine In the spring of 1861, when men were called to join the Union army and fight for their country, Isabella Fogg of Calais, Maine felt that she was called also. She felt compelled to leave the quiet and seclusion of her home, and do all that a woman could do to sustain the hands and the hearts of those who had the great battle of freedom to fight. About this time, changes occurred in Fogg’s family, which seemed to release her from pressing obligations to remain at home. Isabella Fogg followed her son Hugh, a member of the 6th Maine Regiment, to Washington, DC, and she soon volunteered to work for the Maine Camp and…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Mary Ann Bickerdyke

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Civil War Nurse Mary Ann Ball was born on July 19, 1817, near Mount Vernon, Ohio. Her mother died when Mary Ann was just seventeen months old. Mary was sent to live with her grandparents, and when they died she went to live with her Uncle Henry Rodgers on his farm in Hamilton County, near Cincinnati. She received only a very basic education. When Mary Ann was just sixteen she moved to Oberlin, Ohio, and possibly worked in a professor’s home. She enrolled at Oberlin College, one of the few institutions of higher education open to women at that time in the United States, but did not graduate. She later returned to live with her uncle again, worked as a…

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African Americans, Civil War Women, Gettysburg

African Americans of Gettysburg

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Blacks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Margaret Palm was a colorful character in Gettysburg’s African American community during the mid-nineteenth century. She served as a conductor along the local branch of the Underground Railroad, earning the nickname Maggie Bluecoat for the blue circa-1812 military coat she wore while conducting fugitive slaves north. One evening, she was accosted by two strangers who bound her hands and tried to kidnap her into Maryland and slavery. Her screams attracted help and she escaped her assailants. Alexander Dobbin, a Presbyterian minister, arrived in the Marsh Creek valley and purchased a two-hundred-acre plot of land in the spring of 1774. Two years later, Dobbin established the beginnings of local black community when he returned with two slaves…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Educators

Eliza Porter

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Civil War Nurse and Educator Eliza Emily Chappell Porter was the first public school teacher at Fort Dearborn in Chicago. She established normal schools to train high school graduates to be teachers. As a member of the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, she established hospitals for wounded soldiers and distributed supplies. The Porter home in Green Bay, Wisconsin was the last stop on the Underground Railroad before slaves crossed Lake Michigan into the safety of Canada. Early Years Eliza Emily Chappell was born November 5, 1807 in Geneseo, New York, the eighth child of Robert and Elizabeth Kneeland Chappell. Elizabeth died from complications of childbirth. Already burdened with seven young children at home, Robert sent Eliza to live…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Rose O’Neal Greenhow

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Confederate Civil War Spy Early Years Born in Port Tobacco, Maryland, as a teenager Rose O’Neal moved from her family’s Maryland farm to her aunt’s fashionable boardinghouse in Washington, DC. Personable, intelligent, and outgoing, she adapted easily to the social scene of the capital, and people in Washington’s highest circles opened their doors to her. At the age of 26, Rose disappointed an army of suitors by marrying 43-year-old Dr. Robert Greenhow, a wealthy and learned man with whom she had four daughters. In 1850, the couple left Washington and traveled west to pursue the promise of great financial gain. Instead, an injury led to the early death of Dr. Greenhow in San Francisco. A popular Washington widow and hostess…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Eliza Rhea Anderson Fain

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Civil War Civilian and Diarist In her diary, Eliza Fain tells the history of the Civil War as it happened at Rogersville in northeastern Tennessee, an area that was sharply divided in its loyalties to the Union and the Confederacy. She tells of soldiers stopping by their home, deaths and the Battle at Big Creek. The originals of the twenty-eight volumes that comprise Fain’s diary – almost 1,000,000 words – were discovered eighty years after her death. Eliza Rhea Anderson was born at Blountville, Tennessee, on August 1, 1816, to Elizabeth Rhea and Audley Anderson. Eliza’s father died when she was two, leaving her mother with little alternative but to seek refuge for herself and her family with her brother….

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Frances Clayton

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Female Soldier in the Civil War Several hundred women disguised themselves as men and took the bold step of leaving the comforts of home to serve their country during the Civil War. Frances Clalin Clayton disguised herself as a man and took the name Jack Williams in order to fight in the army. For several months, she served in Missouri artillery and cavalry corps. Frances Clalin was born in Illinois in the 1830s. She married Elmer Clayton and gave birth to three children. The Claytons lived on a farm in Minnesota. Some women dressed like men and marched off to war with a relative. Others enlisted because they had no means to support themselves after their loved one left home….

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Civil War Women

Letitia Burwell

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Civil War Civilian Letitia Burwell was born on a plantation in Virginia and spent most of her life in the rural regions of that state. Her book, A Girl’s life in Virginia Before the War (1895), records her memories of the antebellum South. Burwell’s descriptions of life on the plantation are filled with pastoral scenes of a wealthy Virginia family engaged in the daily pleasures of their time. Burwell recalls tales and stories passed down from neighbors and family members that she feels epitomize the quality of life in the South. She tells of social dances, food, the relationships that her family had with their slaves and life among family members. She defends the South against the criticism by outside…

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