Category: Civil War Women

Civil War Women
Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Mary McAllister

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The McAllister sisters, Mary and Martha, were daughters of Daniel and Mary McCullough McAllister. Daniel’s brother James was a farmer and miller, whose anti-slavery sentiments were known in the region. In fact, McAllister’s Mills, near the dam on Rock Creek, were stations on the Underground Railroad, where escaped slaves took refuge on their way to freedom. The home of John and Martha Scott and Martha’s sister Mary McAllister on Chambersburg Street, directly across from the Lutheran Church. Mary volunteered as a nurse at the church, which was being used as a hospital. At the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, the McAllister sisters lived in the store at 41 Chambersburg Street that was run by Martha’s husband, John Scott. On…

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Civil War Women

Mary Anna Henry

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Mary Anna Henry was the second child of Professor Joseph Henry. She had one older brother and two younger sisters. When her father was appointed the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846, he was promised accommodations. Mary Anna Henry When the Smithsonian Institution Building was completed in 1855, a suite of eight rooms was constructed on the second floor of the East Wing, and the Henry family moved in. They remained in these apartments until Joseph Henry died in 1878. Mary and her sisters were well educated. They were taught the domestic arts, and they were tutored in the visual arts, language, and music. Mary even had an artist’s studio in the Smithsonian Institution Building. With the move…

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Mary and Mollie Bell

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Civil War Women Soldiers Cousins Mary and Mollie Bell, aliases Bob Martin and Tom Parker, were adolescent farm girls from Virginia. After their uncle left to join the Union army, the girls decided to conceal their sex and enlist in a cavalry regiment under the command of Confederate General Jubal Early. Image: Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, where the Bells were held for illegally enlisting in the Confederate army The Bells served for two years, and earned the respect of their comrades for their bravery. Mary was promoted to the rank of Sergeant, and Mollie to the rank of Corporal. The girls hid their true identity with the help of their captain, but he was captured in 1864, and the…

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Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Women Artists

Edmonia Lewis

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Women in Art: 19th Century Sculptor Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor who created beautiful art and received great acclaim. In a world which did not encourage women of color, through incredible determination and sense of purpose, Lewis became the first professional African American and Native American sculptor, and often depicted African and Native peoples in her work. Among her best-known sculptures are Minnehaha, Charles Sumner, Phillis Wheatley and Abraham Lincoln. Early Years Edmonia Lewis’ 1865 passport application states that she was born on July 4, 1844 in Greenbush, New York. Her father was a free black of West Indian lineage. Edmonia often said she was given the name Wild Fire by her mother, who was an excellent weaver and…

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African Americans, Civil War Women

Margaret Garner

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Runaway Slave from Kentucky Margaret Garner was a fugitive slave who became widely known when she and her family made a brave escape to freedom in the years before the Civil War. Garner killed her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize winning novel Beloved (1988) is based on this story. Image: The Modern Medea By Thomas Satterwhite Noble Margaret Garner, an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America, was born on June 4, 1834, at Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Kentucky, where her parents were also slaves. When she was old enough, Margaret became a household domestic, waiting on the family and performing household chores. On a bitter cold…

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African Americans, Civil War Women, Women in Religion

Julia Foote

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Female Preacher in the Civil War Era Julia A. J. Foote’s autobiography, A Brand Plucked from the Fire (1879), is representative of a large number of similar texts published by women who believed that Christianity had made them the spiritual equals of men and hence equally authorized to lead the church. Although her autobiography attacks racism and other social abuses, it is the subordination of women and her desire to inspire faith in her Christian sisters that endow her story with its distinctive voice and intensity. Foote’s belief in the gender equality of the Christian spirit and her refusal to defer to husband or minister when her own intuitive sense of personal authority was at stake mark Foote’s autobiographical work…

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Civil War Women

Mary Surratt

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Accused Conspirator in the Lincoln Assassination Mary Elizabeth Jenkins was born in May or June of 1823 near Waterloo, Maryland. She had two brothers. Her father died when she was two years old. Mary was then enrolled at a private girl’s boarding school, Academy for Young Ladies, in Alexandria Virginia. She married John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was sixteen and he was twenty-seven. The couple lived on lands that John had inherited from his foster parents, the Neales, in what is now a section of Washington DC known as Congress Heights. They had three children. In 1851, a fire destroyed their home. The couple bought a farm and established a tavern and later a post office. The tavern…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Women Doctors

Mary Jane Safford

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Civil War Nurse and Female Physician Mary Jane Safford is best known for nursing wounded Union soldiers on battlefields and hospital ships on the Mississippi River during the Civil War, an experience that influenced her to pursue a career in medicine. After the war, she earned her medical degree, established a practice, and taught at the Boston University Medical School. Early Years Mary Jane Safford was born December 31, 1834 in Hyde Park, Vermont, but her family moved to Crete, Illinois when she was three years old. After her parents died, family members sent her to a female academy in Bakersfield, Vermont, then allowed her to travel in Canada to learn French and to act as governess to a German-speaking…

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Mary Anna Morrison Jackson
Authors, Civil War Women, Generals Wives

Mary Anna Morrison Jackson

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Wife of General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson Anna met her future husband while visiting her sister, Isabella Morrison Hill, wife of future Confederate General Dana Harvey Hill, in Lexington, Virginia, where Jackson was a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. Image: Anna with daughter Julia Laura Jackson Mary Anna Morrison – called Anna by friends and family – was born on July 21, 1831, in Charlotte, North Carolina, at Cottage Home, the plantation home of Reverend Robert Hall Morrison and Mary Graham Morrison. Her father was the first President of Davidson College in Charlotte. Anna grew up very differently than her famous husband. Her parents had a large family, ten children who survived to adulthood. Life on the plantation was carefree for…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Katharine Prescott Wormeley

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Civil War Nurse At the beginning of the Civil War, the United States Government was not prepared to offer its soldiers adequate medical care. To fill that need, they created the United States Sanitary Commission on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wounded soldiers of the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. It operated across the North, raised its own funds, enlisted thousands of volunteers and was run by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Peninsula Campaign of 1862 lasted nine weeks, and inflicted a terrible cost in lives. During that campaign, Katharine Prescott Wormeley, Georgeanna Woolsey, and Eliza Woolsey Howland served as Union nurses. Working on board Sanitary Commission’s hospital transport ships, these three members of prominent Northern families…

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