Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Sallie Robbins Broadhead

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Civil War Nurse and Teacher Image: Coming Rain June 30, 1863 Dale Gallon, Artist Brigadier General John Buford at McPherson’s Farm Buford and his brigade commanders, Devin and Gamble, discuss the impending battle. Sallie Robbins Broadhead, a teacher in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, lived on the western end of Chambersburg Street in the end unit of a row house called Warren’s Block with her husband Joseph and 4-year-old daughter Mary. Sallie, a thin, plain-looking young woman, kept a daily diary from mid-June to mid-July 1863, providing a graphic firsthand account of the ordeal endured that summer by the civilians of Gettysburg. Gettysburg’s residents, about 2400 in number, knew that Southern troops were not very far away. On June 21, Captain Robert Bell’s…

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Women in the American Revolution

Anne Hulton

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British Loyalist in the American Colonies Image: Shot Heard ‘Round The World Anne Hulton was a sister of Boston’s commissioner of customs and, like some 15 to 35 percent of the white colonial population, a British Loyalist. Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain during and after the Revolutionary War. They were often referred to as Tories, Royalists, or King’s Men by the Patriots, those who supported the American cause. Most of what is known about Anne Hulton comes from the letters she wrote to her friend Elizabeth Lightbody between 1763 and 1776. Of Hulton’s published letters the most frequently studied have been those written during 1767-1776, collected in Letters of a Loyalist Lady (1927). Scholars first…

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Famous Wives, Women in the American Revolution

Elizabeth Lewis

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Founding Father Francis Lewis Wife of Francis Lewis: Signer of the Declaration of Independence Like other signers of the Declaration of Independence, Francis Lewis was condemned by the British authorities, and a price was put on his head. While Lewis was attending the Continental Congress in the autumn of 1776, British troops destroyed the Lewis estate on Long Island and arrested Elizabeth Lewis, taking her to prison New York City. She never recovered from the inhuman treatment she received at the hands of the British. Not much is known of Elizabeth Annesley’s early life or her ancestors, but there is evidence of her high character and undaunted spirit. Francis Lewis was the son of a Welsh clergyman of the Church…

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Civil War Women, Generals Wives

Anna Marie Hood

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Wife of Confederate General John Bell Hood Anna Marie Hennen was born June 28, 1837. She was the daughter of a prominent New Orleans attorney, Duncan Hennen, and granddaughter of Alfred Hennen, Justice on the Louisiana Supreme Court. She was described as beautiful, charming, and she was educated in Paris, France. She would not meet John Bell Hood until after the Civil War. John Bell Hood was born June 29, 1831 in Owingsville, Kentucky. He and his siblings were left with their mother for approximately eight months each year during the middle and late 1840s while Dr. John Hood taught medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Young John Bell would be influenced by his grandfathers – Lucas Hood, a crusty…

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Women in the American Revolution

Sarah Tarrant

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Civil Disobedience in Salem, Massachusetts Thirty-year-old nurse Sarah Tarrant bravely challenged the British soldiers who occupied her town in February 1775. Backstory In November of 1774, Colonel David Mason was commissioned by the Patriots of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as an artillery officer. He had some experience in this during the French and Indian War at Fort William Henry. At the end of the war in 1763, he had formed an artillery company in Boston, Massachusetts. He had bought 17 old French cannon, 12-pounders, and was having them refit and mounted on carriages in Salem, Massachusetts.
Women in the American Revolution

Mary Gould Almy

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Loyalist Woman in the American Revolution Mary Gould was born in 1735 in Newport, Rhode Island. Benjamin Almy was born on December 16, 1724. Mary Gould married Benjamin Almy on October 22, 1762 at Trinity Church in Newport – his church. She was a Quaker; he was Anglican. When sides were chosen over the issue of American Independence, Mary remained loyal to the crown. Benjamin joined the patriot cause, as did some of Mary’s other relatives. And like hundreds of other Newport volunteers, he left his wife and family behind and joined the Patriot army. Her diary is addressed to him.
Civil War Women, Generals Wives

Helen McDowell

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Wife of Union General Irvin McDowell Helen Burden, born June 27, 1826, was the daughter of Henry and Helen McOuat Burden, who came to America from Scotland via Quebec. The family settled first in Albany, New York, then Troy, New York, where Helen’s father owned the Burden Iron Works, which made horseshoes. Image: General Irvin McDowell Irvin McDowell, born 1818 near Columbus, Ohio, entered the West Point Military Academy in 1834, when he was 16 years old. He graduated from West Point in 1838, and served on the Northern frontier during the Canada border disturbances, on the Maine frontier pending the disputed Territory controversy, and in the Mexican war under General John Ellis Wool. Helen met McDowell through General Wool,…

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Women in the American Revolution

Deborah Champion

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American Patriot Image: Cloak Worn by Deborah Champion Deborah wrote to a friend, including in her letter descriptions of the clothing she wore, including this scarlet cloak made of camlet, a fabric of Asian origin, originally made of silk and camel’s hair. In September 1775, twenty-two-year-old Deborah Champion of New London, Connecticut, was asked by her father, Henry Champion – the Continental Army’s commissary general – to deliver messages from her father to General George Washington in Boston. Riding on horseback with the family slave Aristarchus as an escort, Deborah headed north up the Quinebaug Valley to Canterbury, then east to Pomfret, crossing enemy lines in Massachusetts.

Photograph of wife of General James Longstreet, Maria Louise Garland Longstreet
Civil War Women, Generals Wives

Maria Louise Garland Longstreet

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Wife of Confederate General James Longstreet James Longstreet was born in Edgefield, South Carolina on January 8, 1821, son of James and Mary Anne Dent Longstreet. His father, who nicknamed him Pete, was a farmer, and Longstreet spent the first nine years engaged in farm work or outdoor activities with his older siblings William and Anna, as well as the four younger sisters he accumulated between 1822 and 1829. Longstreet’s father owned slaves, and through the combined efforts of their toil and the family’s work, the Longstreet farm was prosperous. Young James’s early education was one gained through hard work, and he developed physical strength, independence of mind, and a strong work ethic. While he dreamed of a military career,…

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Women in Business, Women Inventors

Catherine Greene

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Businesswoman and Inventor of the Cotton Gin Catherine Littlefield was born on February 17, 1755, on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. Her father, John Littlefield, served in the Rhode Island legislature, and her mother, Phebe Ray, was a descendant of the earliest settlers of Block Island. Her mother died when Catharine was ten years old, and she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle, Catharine Ray Greene and William Greene – the future governor of the state – in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Her aunt, an attractive energetic woman who was known as a charming hostess, took over the role of Catherine’s mother, and supervised her education as a young woman of the upper classes….

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