Tag: generals wives

generals wives
African Americans, Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Women Doctors

Rebecca Lee Crumpler

• Maggie

First African American Woman Doctor Rebecca Lee was born in Delaware in 1833. An aunt in Pennsylvania, who spent much of her time caring for sick neighbors, raised her. Due to her aunt’s influence, Rebecca developed a strong compassion for the sick at a very young age, and learned to care for ill patients. The first formal school for nursing did not open until 1873, so she performed her work without any formal training. By 1852, she moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she worked as a nurse for the next eight years. Her dedication gained her notice from the doctors she served under, and with their recommendations, she entered the New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1860. In…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women, Women in Theater

Pauline Cushman

• Maggie

Civil War Spy and Theater Actress Pauline Cushman, a Union spy, was born Harriet Wood on June 10, 1833, in New Orleans and spent some of her early childhood there. Her father then moved the family to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Pauline did not like it there, and at seventeen she ran away to New York to become an actress. She landed some small parts and caught the attention of a theatre owner from New Orleans, who hired her on the spot. While Pauline was in New York, she married Charles Dickinson, a musician, on February 7, 1853. Sometime after their wedding, Charles and Pauline moved to his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, where he found work as a music teacher. In…

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Authors, Civil War Women

Louisa May Alcott

• Maggie

American Author and Civil War Nurse Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832, the second daughter of Abigail May, women’s suffrage and abolitionist advocate, and Bronson Alcott, philosopher and education reformer. Louisa and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May were educated by their father, and spent their childhood in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts. When Louisa was 10, Bronson enlisted the family in an experiment in communal living on a tract he named Fruitlands, because of its orchard. Six months of Transcendental agriculture left the Alcotts destitute, Bronson suicidal, and the Alcott marriage on the verge of dissolution. A distressed Louisa recorded it all in her childhood diary. At age 15, troubled by the poverty…

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Civil War Women

Women and Girls in the Browns Island Explosion

• Maggie

Women and Children Killed in Explosion The Confederate States Laboratories (CSL) was located on Brown’s Island in the James River in Virginia. The brainchild of Confederate ordnance chief Colonel Josiah Gorgas, the CSL made small arms and ammunition for the Confederate Army. Image: Monument to the Women and Girls in the Browns Island Explosion This gray granite marker now stands beside the gazebo in Richmond’s Oakwood Cemetery. The names of those who perished and their ages are engraved on the back. Because most of Richmond’s men were serving their country at the front, women and children were the bulk of the workforce at CSL, from the age of twelve to sixty. Their hands were small and well suited to assembling…

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African Americans, Authors, Civil War Women

Harriet Jacobs

• Maggie

African American Abolitionist and Author Harriet Jacobs escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs’ single work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the sexual harassment and abuse they endured. Harriet Ann Jacobs was born in 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina to Daniel Jacobs and Delilah. Daniel was a mulatto slave owned by Dr. Andrew Knox. Delilah was a mulatto slave owned by John Horniblow, a tavern owner. Harriet inherited the status of slave from her mother—if the mother was a slave, the child was a slave. That…

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Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Lydia Leister

• Maggie

Home Used as Union Headquarters at the Battle of Gettysburg On July 1, 1863, Federal troops surrounded the Leister farm – it was in the crook of the fishhook battle line along Cemetery Ridge. When General George Gordon Meade chose the Leister house (image left) as the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, Lydia and her children sought shelter with relatives who lived on the Baltimore Pike. Lydia Leister was a widow who owned a modest farm along the Taneytown Road, ½ mile south of Gettysburg behind Cemetery Ridge. Lydia had purchased the property in 1861, and moved into the modest two-room house with her six children, the youngest, only three years old. The widow Leister made her living…

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Abolitionists, Authors, Civil War Women

Lydia Maria Child

• Maggie

Women’s Rights Activist and Author Lydia Maria Child was a women’s rights activist, abolitionist, Indian rights activist, author and journalist. Her journals, fiction and domestic manuals reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. Her writings were inspired by a strong sense of justice and love of freedom. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1802, Lydia Maria Francis was the youngest of six children. Her father was a baker famous for his Medford Crackers. She liked to be called Maria. Though the home atmosphere reflected her father’s strict Calvinist beliefs, she was greatly influenced by her very intelligent older brother, Convers. In 1814, after the death of her mother and the marriage of her favorite sister Mary, her father decided…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Nancy Hart Douglas

• Maggie

Confederate Spy and Guerrilla Fighter Nancy Hart, a Confederate spy and soldier, was born in 1846, in Raleigh, North Carolina. When she was an infant, her family moved to Tazewell, Virginia. Her mother was first cousin to Andrew Johnson, who became president after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Image: Nancy Hart Douglas in 1862 In 1853, Nancy and her family moved in with her sister and brother-in-law, Mary and William Clay Price. In the next six years, Nancy lived in the wilderness of Roane County, Virginia—now West Virginia. She became an excellent shot with a rifle and an expert rider. After the Civil War began, western Virginia became a dangerous place. The citizenry held divided loyalties—some pro-Confederate and many…

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Civil War Women, Feminists

Mary Livermore

• Maggie

Civil War Nurse and Feminist During the Civil War, Mary Livermore organized a volunteer support network for the Union hospitals, wrote letters for wounded soldiers, escorted wounded soldiers from hospitals to their homes, and raised large sums of money to support the work of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Livermore worked closely with Mary Ann Bickerdyke who was chief of nursing under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant and General William T. Sherman during the Atlanta Campaign. Mary Ashton Rice was born in Boston on December 19, 1820, into a strict Calvinist Baptist family, took religious questions seriously as a child. She liked to pretend to be a preacher, using the kitchen table as her pulpit, and if she could…

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Mary and Mollie Bell

• Maggie

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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