Tag: Civil War women

Civil War women
Civil War Women, Famous Wives

Elizabeth Todd Edwards

• Maggie

Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln In October 1839, twenty-year-old Mary Todd moved to Springfield, Illinois to live with her older married sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards. As was the custom, Elizabeth served as Mary’s guardian. Despite their sometimes rocky relationship, Elizabeth rescued Mary Todd Lincoln from an insane asylum in 1875, and gave her a home. Image: Elizabeth Todd Edwards and Mary Todd Lincoln Elizabeth Todd was born in 1816 in Lexington, Kentucky. Her sister Mary was born on December 13, 1818. Their mother Eliza Parker Todd died of a post-birth bacterial infection in 1824. Fourteen months later, their father Robert Todd married Elizabeth Humphreys. Over the next 15 years, nine half-siblings joined the family. Mary did not get along with…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Diaries of Civil War Nurses

• Maggie

Volunteer Nurses: Forgotten Heroes of the Civil War At the beginning of the war, women in all walks of life saw the need for nurses and simply showed up at military hospitals. A few of the more famous nurses kept a written record of their experiences, including Hannah Ropes, Jane Stuart Woolsey, Kate Cumming and Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Some are merely names on lists in dusty government archives; others we will never know. Backstory In April 1861, Dorothea Dix and a hastily assembled group of volunteer female nurses staged a march on Washington, demanding that the government recognize their desire to aid the Union’s wounded. Secretary of War Simon Cameron quickly named Dix to superintend the women nurses assigned to…

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Civil War Women, Women Lawyers

Myra Bradwell

• Maggie

A Pioneer in American Law Myra Bradwell, a publisher and political activist, almost became the first woman lawyer in Illinois. Though she never practiced law, she became one of the most influential people in the legal profession, and paved the way for future women lawyers. Through her publication, the Chicago Legal News, she initiated many important legal and social reforms. Early Years Myra Colby was born on February 12, 1831 in Manchester, Vermont, the youngest of five children of Eben and Abigail Willey Colby. Shortly after Myra’s birth, the family moved to Portage in western New York, where they lived until 1843. They then moved to Shaumberg, Illinois, near Chicago. She attended finishing school in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and completed her…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Gettysburg Nurses

• Maggie

Gettysburg’s Own Angels of the Battlefield The importance of the humanitarian effort voluntarily undertaken by the women of Gettysburg to the thousands of men who lay searing in the July sun cannot be overstated. They dedicated themselves to the care of the wounded from both armies beginning in the mid morning hours of July 1, 1863, long before military medical personnel arrived. Backstory Throughout the month of June 1863 there had been repeated alarms in Gettysburg: “The Rebels are coming.” Suddenly on Friday June 26 a contingent of General Robert E. Lee‘s army galloped up Chambersburg Street firing their pistols into the air while citizens scrambled to the safety of their homes. They plundered and ate everything within their reach…

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Clara Barton in the Civil War
Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Clara Barton in the Civil War

• Maggie

Civil War Nurse and Humanitarian Most people remember Clara Barton as the founder of the American Red Cross and an independent Civil War nurse. During the war she maintained a home in Washington, DC, but traveled with the Union Army, providing care and relief services to the wounded on many battlefields. The significance of the work she performed during and immediately after the war cannot be overstated. Patent Office Clerk Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Clara Barton moved to Washington, DC in 1854. There she worked as a clerk in the U. S. Patent Office from 1854 to 1857, the first woman to receive a substantial clerkship in the federal government. Her $1,400 annual salary was the same as that…

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Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Rose Farm

• Maggie

The Battle for the Wheatfield at the Rose Farm The Pride of Erin by Dale Gallon At less than fifty yards, the men of Colonel Pat Kelly’s famed Irish Brigade prepare to fire their first volley into General Joseph Kershaw’s South Carolinians in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. The farm of George and Dorothy Rose is south of Gettysburg on the eastern side of Emmitsburg Road. The farmhouse dates back to 1811 and was completed in its present form in 1824. The barn was built in 1812. George Rose was a butcher from Germantown, Pennsylvania, who had recently purchased the farm from Jacob Benner for over $8,000. The Farm was at the center of some of the fiercest fighting on the…

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Civil War Women Soldiers

• Maggie

Women Who Fought in the Civil War They were determined to fight, no matter the cost. They dressed in men’s clothing and assumed masculine names; bound their breasts; rubbed dirt on their faces to simulate whiskers; learned to talk, walk, chew and smoke like men; and hid in every conceivable way that they were female. They were soldiers in the Civil War. Both the Union and Confederate Armies forbade the enlistment of women, but historians have estimated that some 400 women went to war (there were probably more), some without anyone ever discovering their gender. Because they passed as men, it is impossible to judge how many women soldiers served in the Civil War. Some joined the army out of…

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Authors, Civil War Women, Feminists

Lillie Devereux Blake

• Maggie

19th Century Author and Women’s Rights Activist Lillie Devereux Blake was a leading feminist and reformer, as well as a prominent fiction writer, journalist, essayist and lecturer, who worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for women’s suffrage (the right to vote). She was born Elizabeth Johnson Devereux on August 12, 1833 to planters George Pollock Devereux and Sarah Elizabeth Johnson Devereux in Raleigh, North Carolina, but spent much of her early childhood on a plantation in Roanoke, Virginia. George Devereux called his daughter Lily because of her fair complexion, and she continued through life as Lillie. When her father died in 1837, her mother decided to leave Roanoke and return with her daughters to her family in…

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Abolitionists, Civil War Women

Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

• Maggie

The Savior of Hundreds of Slaves Image: Harriet Tubman Leading The Way After Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery, she returned to the South nineteen times and escorted hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of brave abolitionists and safe houses where runaway slaves could rest during their journey north to the free states or Canada. Backstory She was born Araminta Ross around 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland, on the plantation where her parents were enslaved. She later took her mother’s name as her own: Harriet. At age five or six, she was “hired out” by her master as a nursemaid for a small baby. She had to stay awake all night so that the baby…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Civil War Women Spies for the North

• Maggie

Women Spies for the Union Image: Illustration of Sarah Emma Edmonds on horseback dodging a bullet fired by a southern woman. American society was still quite Victorian in many ways during the 1860s. Therefore, women spies were not as likely to be roughly interrogated or hanged when their true identity was discovered. These heroines exhibited great courage and were willing to suffer imprisonment or death in the service of their country. Elizabeth Van Lew From a wealthy family well-known in Richmond society, Elizabeth Van Lew was educated in Philadelphia and returned home an ardent abolitionist. Elizabeth was in her forties when the War began, and steadfastly loyal to the Union. She started writing to Federal officials to tell them about…

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