Category: Civil War Women

Civil War Women
Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Rebecca Wright

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Virginia Spy for the Union Rebecca McPherson Wright, a Union spy during the Civil War, was born near Winchester, Virginia in January, 1842. Her family was one of the few in Winchester who supported the Union. Her father, Amos Wright, died in a Confederate prison early in the war. Rebecca was a schoolteacher, and due to her Quaker beliefs, she abhorred slavery. In August 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early’s army occupied Winchester. While trying to discover the troop strength of Early’s army, Federal scouts came across Thomas Laws, an elderly slave, at his home. When Laws told them that he had a permit to pass through the Confederate lines three times a week to sell vegetables, the scouts enlisted his…

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Ann Reeves Jarvis and her daughter Anna Marie Jarvis
Civil War Women

Anna Jarvis

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Founder of Mother’s Day Anna Marie Jarvis is the founder of the Mother’s Day holiday in the United States. Her birthplace, known as the Anna Jarvis House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It was built in 1854 and is a two story, frame dwelling, which is also notable as General George B. McClellan‘s first field headquarters during his 1861 western Virginia campaign. Anna Marie Jarvis was born May 1, 1864, in Webster, West Virginia, the ninth of eleven children born to Reverend Granville and Ann Reeves Jarvis. The family moved to nearby Grafton when Anna was a year old. In 1881, she enrolled at the Augusta Female Academy in Staunton, Virginia, now Mary Baldwin…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Emma Holmes

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Diarist in Charleston, South Carolina Emma Holmes, a Civil War diarist and teacher, was born in 1838 in Charleston, South Carolina, to a plantation owner. During the Civil War, from February 1861 until March 1866, Emma kept a diary of her life in Charleston, the affairs of her family and history as she observed it. A true Confederate, like many others, she believed the war would be over within a few months. In the spring of 1861, Emma recorded in her diary that “the city seemed suddenly turned into a camp. Nothing was heard but preparations for war. The great body of citizens [seems] to be so impressed with the justice of our cause that they place entire confidence in…

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Ann Reeves Jarvis and her daughter Anna Marie Jarvis
Civil War Women

Ann Maria Jarvis

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Ann Maria Reeves was born in Culpeper, Virginia, on September 30, 1832, the daughter of the Reverend Josiah Reeves. When Ann was 12 years old, the family moved to Barbour County in present-day West Virginia, when Reverend Reeves was transferred to a Methodist church in Philippi. Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis and daughter Anna Jarvis In 1850, Ann married Granville E. Jarvis, the son of a Philippi Baptist minister, and moved to Webster in Taylor County. Ann gave birth to eleven children, but only four lived to adulthood. Two years later, Ann organized a series of Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in Webster and other nearby towns to improve health and sanitary conditions, which contributed to the high mortality rate of children…

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Abolitionists, Civil War Women, Feminists

Anna Dickinson

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Abolitionist and Lecturer during the Civil War Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was an abolitionist, writer, lecturer and advocate for women’s rights. A gifted speaker at a very young age, she significantly influenced the distribution of political power in the Union just prior to the Civil War. She helped the Republican Party gain key positions in the hard-fought election campaigns of 1863, and was the first woman to speak before the U.S. Congress. Childhood Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Philadelphia on October 28, 1842, the youngest of five children of Quaker parents. Her father was a dedicated abolitionist who died of a heart attack shortly after giving a fiery antislavery speech in 1844. Since Anna was only two years old, she…

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Betty Churchill Lacy
Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Betty Churchill Lacy

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Betty Churchill Jones was born at Ellwood Plantation in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near Fredericksburg. In the years following the Revolutionary War, brothers William and Churchill Jones went about acquiring homesteads in the Wilderness area of Virginia. William and his first wife built Ellwood in the 1790s. Churchill acquired the Falmouth mansion, Chatham, in 1806. Churchill Jones died in 1822, leaving Chatham to his brother, William, who was well advanced in years and already owned one large estate. He transferred Chatham to Judge Coalter, the husband of his only daughter, Hannah. He could not have bequeathed it directly to Hannah – it was unlawful for women to own property. In 1828, William Jones, in his 79th year, married Lucy Gordon, who…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Eugenia Phillips

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Confederate Spy in the Civil War Born into an assimilated Jewish family in the South, Eugenia Phillips, like many Southern Jews, was a strong supporter of the Confederate cause. Beginning in 1861, Phillips aided Confederate spy networks and secretly passed material aid to Confederate troops. The family later moved to Georgia, where Phillips supposedly toned down her outspoken support of the Confederacy. Eugenia Levy was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1820 to prominent Jewish parents. One of six daughters, Eugenia was well-educated, outspoken and fiery-tempered. At age l6, she married a prominent Jewish lawyer, Philip Phillips, who was 13 years her senior. The couple moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he had already established a successful law practice. He and…

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Frances Hook

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Female Soldier from Illinois Frances Hook was born in Illinois in 1847. When she was three years old, both her parents died, leaving her to be raised by her older brother. Frances and her brother were living in Chicago when the Civil War began. Inscription below photograph: ‘Fanny the soldier girl Exchanged by Genl Thomas at Chattanooga.’ She was 14 years old when her brother announced that he was going to enlist in the Union Army. Since her brother was her only living relative, and she did not want to be left alone, Frances decided to disguise herself as a man and follow him to war. Frances cut her hair short and told the recruiting officer she was 22 years…

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Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Women Artists

Vinnie Ream

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One of the First Women Artists in the United States Vinnie Ream (1847–1914) was an American sculptor whose most famous work was the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. In 1866, at the age of 18, Ream was selected by Congress to sculpt a memorial statue of Lincoln, making her the first woman commissioned to create a work of art for the United States government. Ream later created sculptures of Samuel Kirkwood and Sequoyah for the National Statuary Hall. During her career, Ream sculpted portraits of the likes of women’s rights leader Susan B. Anthony; abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher; former slave Frederick Douglass; 20th President of the United States James A. Garfield; journalist Horace Greeley; Hungarian composer…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Annie Etheridge

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Union Civil War Nurse from Michigan Annie Etheridge had already been a nurse at a Michigan hospital, and the Civil War provided her the perfect opportunity to continue in that profession. She acted as what today would be called a combat medic, providing immediate medical care to wounded soldiers, often under fire during battle. In addition to nursing, she served the regiment as cook and laundress. Etheridge was one of only two women to receive the Kearny Cross. Lorinda Anna “Annie” Blair was born into a wealthy family on May 3, 1844, in Detroit, Michigan. She was an only child, and her mother died when she was quite young. Soon thereafter, Annie moved with her father to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The…

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