So, it seems that I have hit upon a point of interest-- at least for myself. I have been a student of history since high school, a student of women's history since college. Having a women's history focus, I have not so much focused on wars. Men's history is all about war--who did what in which war to make themselves a hero and gain respect of the nation....yadda, yadda....blah blah. Wars are about killing and generally about which guy's (or nation's) ego is bigger than some other guy's ego. Not what I choose to study. Yet, I fully believe our history will teach us how to be great in the future and how to avoid going down the same wrong paths as our ancestors. The funny thing is that as I follow these wars, especially as I follow the women who seemingly were caught in the crossfire and had to make the most of their situation, I am finding awesome stories of resilience, ingenuity, and greatness. The stories of the women in the civil war are somehow rising to the top of my list. I find them inspiring. I hope you do too. It makes me wonder what future stories we will hear about the women who serve in the military now... But, for today, more about Sally Tompkins aka "Captain Sally": Born in "PoplarGrove,"Mathews City., Va., 9 Nov. 1833, after her husband's death, Sally's mother moved the family to Richmond, where Sally lived at the outbreak of civil war. When the government asked the public to help care for the wounded of F irst Bull Run, Sally responded by opening a private hospital in a house donated for that purpose by judge John Robertson. Robertson Hospital, subsidized by Tompkins' substantial inheritance, treated 1,333 Confederate soldiers from its opening until the last patients were discharged 13 June 1865. Because the hospital returned more of its patients to the ranks than any other medical-care facility, officers tried to place their most seriously wounded men in Tompkins' care. She used her high rate of success to convince President Jefferson Davis to allow her hospital to stay open even as his orders shut down other private hospitals in the city. To circumvent the regulation calling for all hospitals to be run by military personnel, on 9 Sept. 1861 Davis appointed Tompkins captain of cavalry, unassigned, making her the only woman to hold a commission in the Confederate States Army. Her military rank allowed her to draw government rations and a salary to help defray some of her operating costs. Only 73 deaths were recorded at Robertson Hospital during its 45-month existence. Tompkins remained a beloved celebrity in postwar Richmond, active in the Episcopal church and a popular guest at veterans' reunions and Daughters of the Confederacy meetings. The war, her continued charity work, and her generous hospitality to veterans eventually exhausted her fortune. In 1905 "Captain Sally" moved into the Confederate Women's Home in Richmond as a lifetime guest, dying there 26 July 1916, in her 83d year. An honorary member of the R. E. Lee Camp of the Confederate Veterans, she was honored with a full military funeral. 4 chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy are named in Tompkins' honor. *somewhere it is noted that her attention to cleanliness and sanitation were the secrets to her success. It is possible that her standards were somewhere paid attention to by later doctors who adopted similar standards of cleanliness.
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Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997. Controversy surrounded Mary Edwards Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832 in the Town of Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is marked with a historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many of the reform movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid 1800s. He believed strongly in education and equality for his five daughters Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one son, Alvah). He also believed they were hampered by the tight-fitting women's clothing of the day. His daughter, Mary, became an early enthusiast for Women's Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of dress reform. The most famous proponent of dress reform was Amelia Bloomer, a native of Homer, New York, whose defended a colleague's right to wear "Turkish pantaloons" in her Ladies' Temperance Newspaper, the Lily. "Bloomers," as they became known, did achieve some popular acceptance towards the end of the 19th century as women took up the new sport of bicycling. Mary Edwards Walker discarded the unusual restrictive women's clothing of the day. Later in her life she donned full men's evening dress to lecture on Women's Rights. In June 1855 Mary, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in the nation when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She gratuated at age 21 after three 13-week semesters of medical training which she paid $55 each for. In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller, wearing trousers and a man's coat and kept her own name. Together they set up a medical practice in Rome, NY, but the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice floundered. They were divorced 13 years later. When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon -- the first female surgeon in the US Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the US Patent Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga). In September 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons. She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still less than some widows' pensions. On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award. In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only “actual combat with an enemy” She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told the New York Times: "Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her time and no one could stomach it." An Army board reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex." After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer, touring here and abroad on women's rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association in 1866. Walker prided herself by being arrested numerous times for wearing full male dress, including wing collar, bow tie, and top hat. She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and commentary called Hit, a combination autobiography and commentary on divorce in 1871, and a second book, Unmasked, or the Science of Immortality, about infidelity in 1878. In 1872 in Oswego, Mary E. Walker attempted to vote, one of many women who made the attempt over the years on the road to full suffrage. In 1890, Mary declared herself a candidate for Congress in Oswego. The next year, she campaigned for a U.S. Senate seat and, the following year, paid her way to the Democratic National Convention. She died in the Town of Oswego on February 21, 1919 and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery Road. Ironically, the 19th Amendment giving owmen the vote was ratified that same year. A 20¢ stamp honoring Dr. Mary Walker was issued in Oswego, NY on June 10, 1982. The stamp commemorates the first woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the second woman to graduate from a medical school in the United States. In 2000, Mary Edwards Walker was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame at Seneca Falls, New York. Mary Smith (née Kelsey) Peake(1823-February 22, 1862), an American teacher and humanitarian, is best known for having taught children of former slaves under the Emancipation Oak tree in 1861, the first educational effort from which grew Hampton University. Mary Smith Peake was a free citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia. She was born Mary Smith Kelsey in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father was an Englishman and her mother was a free black woman. When Mary was six, her mother sent her to Alexandria (then part of the District of Columbia) for the purpose of attending school. She remained there in school for about ten years, until a law of the United States Congress was enacted to the effect that the law of Virginia in relation to free mixed people should prevail in the District of Columbia. (This was several years before Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia in 1846). The new law closed all schools for mulattos in that city, as in Virginia (and other Southern states), after the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, and prior to Reconstruction after the Civil War, it was unlawful to educate non-whites. Thus, Mary was compelled to leave the school as she was from Virginia. When sixteen years old, having finished her education, she returned to her mother, at Norfolk, where Mary secretly taught slaves for years. She founded an organization called the Daughters of Zion. The focus of this organization was to give assistance to the poor and the sick. She was a member of the First Baptist Church of Norfolk. She supported herself by making clothes and teaching. In 1851, she married Thomas Peake, a free Black. They had a daughter named Hattie whom they called "Daisy". During the American Civil War (1861-1865), nearby Fort Monroe remained in Union hands, and became a place of refuge for escaped slaves seeking asylum, who were commonly referred to as "contraband", a legal status which prevented them from being returned to Confederate owners. They built the Grand Contraband Camp near but outside the protection of Fort Monroe. Mrs. Peake was asked to help teach, and began doing so on September 17, 1861 under the famous tree, which was located several miles outside of the protective safety of Fort Monroe in Phoebus, a small town in Elizabeth City County. Soon, sponsored by the American Missionary Association, she was teaching in the Brown Cottage, the seed from which Hampton Institute (and later Hampton University) would grow. Mary Peake's school included more than fifty children during the day and twenty adults at night. She became seriously ill but would not rest. On Washington's birthday in 1862 she died of tuberculosis. In 1863, the Virginia Peninsula community gathered under this tree to hear the first Southern reading of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. In modern times, the historic Emancipation Oak (at least 140 years old now) is located on the campus of Hampton University in what is now the City of Hampton, Virginia. It is designated one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society and is a National Historic Landmark. The Mary Peake Center of Hampton Public Schools is named in her honor. According to its website, it is a "center for gifted children dedicated to providing a comprehensive set of experiences for those children who by nature of their complex processing abilities, require a fully differentiated educational environment." Mary Peake Boulevard in Hampton was also named in her honor. A book about her, Mary S. Peake, the Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe was written shortly after her death by Reverend Lewis C. Lockwood. When I was a wee baby dyke of only 19, I was in college at Central Michigan University and floundering to find a major area of study that I could excel in. I kept finding myself more and more in the company of women who were part of the women's studies program there. With the help of a couple of guiding professors who later became advisors, I became a history major with a women's studies minor (the only available degree option in women's studies at the time). While I like to say I spent my college years studying women, I did actually do enough work to graduate. I wish I had pictures now of Dr. Carol Green-Devens Ramirez, and Dr. Claudia Clark. But alas, that was before these interwebs had the possibility of recording our every move. Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841-1898) was the first woman I ever wrote a paper on. Professor Carol Green-Devens was then editor of the Michigan Historical Review at Clarke Historical Library where some of Sarah Emma Edmonds' papers were kept. During the Civil War, Sarah enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Infantry as Franklin Thompson. She at first served as a male field nurse, participating in several campaigns under General McClellan, including the First andSecond Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, the Peninsula Campaign, Vicksburg, and others. I was particularly intrigued by the story I read which said she was prompted to join the army by a book she had read in her youth about a girl named Fanny Campbell and her adventures on a pirate ship dressed as a man. In 1864 Boston publisher DeWolfe, Fiske, & Co. published Edmonds' account of her military experiences as The Female Spy of the Union Army. One year later her story was picked up by a Hartford, CT publisher who issued it with a new title, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. It was a huge success, selling in excess of 175,000 copies. In 1867, she married L. H. Seelye, a Canadian mechanic with whom she had three children. Her two sons and her daughter died young, so she adopted two boys. In 1886, she received a government pension of $12 a month for her military service, and after some campaigning, gained an honorable discharge. In 1897, she became the only woman admitted to the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War Union Army veterans' organization. Edmonds died in La Porte, Texas and is buried in Washington Cemetery in Houston, Texas. She was a civil war hero and should be remembered as such. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992. Edmonds book was reprinted again in 1999 with a new title, Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse and Spy. While I did extensive study on her in the early 1990's and drew from original documents, I have outrageously plagiarized Wikipedia for this bio.For more information on Sarah Emma Edmonds, see Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame page, Memoirs of A Soldier, Nurse and Spy, or go go Wikipedia or Google to find out more. |
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