Women's Civil War Museum
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
The Women's Civil War Museum is one of five Civil War museums and attractions in Bardstown. It was opened in 1999 and is the only museum dedicated to role of women during the American Civil War. The Women's Civil War Museum depicts the role women played during the Civil War. Many were nurses, some were even spies and soldiers, while others, of course, sustained the home life while their husbands fought at the battlefront. There are many original dresses on display, numerous other artifacts and countless stories that are told.
Images
Frances Clayton
Frances Clayton disguised as a soldier.
Sarah Edmonds, Canadian by birth.
Sarah Edmonds disguised as a soldier.
General F.C. Ainsworth. Said no women served in the Civil War.
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
While a popular Civil War-era saying was: “Better a soldier’s widow
than a coward’s wife,” some women took it a step further. Flying in the
face of Victorian conventions and the traditional view of females as
frail, passive and subordinate, they enlisted in the army. About 250
women are thought to have served in the Confederate army disguised as
men, with about 400 women serving in a similar manner in the Union army.
Frances Clayton was one such female, serving in Missouri artillery and
cavalry units. She’s seen below in her military garb (see picture 2).
Sometimes, the female soldiers weren’t even American. Consider the case of Sarah Edmonds. Canadian by birth, she enlisted as a private in the Second Michigan Infantry as Franklin Thompson in 1861, in Detroit. Sher fought in the bloody battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg and First Manassas and is one of only a few women known to have served for the duration of the Civil War (or, as people in the South sometimes still call it, “that recent unpleasantry”). After the war, she married a Canadian mechanic, L. H. Seelye, and had three children. She received a government pension for her military service in 1886. That same year, she received a letter from the Secretary of War which acknowledged her as “a female soldier” who had rendered “faithful service in the ranks.” Seelye died in Texas in 1898.
There were many others: Mary Scaberry (Charles Freeman), a private in the Fifty-Second Ohio Infantry, enlisted in Summer 1862 at age 17 but, by November, was admitted to a Lebanon, KY hospital with a fever. Transferred to a Louisville hospital, where she was outed, Scaberry was discharged for “sexual incompatibility.” Albert D. J. Cashier of Illinois (Jennie Irene Hodgers) served four years, receiving a military pension and spending her final days in a a soldiers’ home, only to be outed at death. Florina Budwin and her husband served side-by-side in the Union Army. Loretta Velazquez (Lt. Harry Buford), Satronia Smith Hunt of Iowa, Madame Collier of East Tennessee and many others left home and hearth to serve. Velazquez wrote: “Fear was a word I did not know the meaning of.”
Ironically, the U.S. Army tried to deny that women had served as soldiers at all. When Ida Tarbell of The American Magazine wrote to Adjutant General F. C. Ainsworth in 1909 asking if there were records of woman who served in the Civil War, he denied this, writing that “no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files.”
Sometimes, the female soldiers weren’t even American. Consider the case of Sarah Edmonds. Canadian by birth, she enlisted as a private in the Second Michigan Infantry as Franklin Thompson in 1861, in Detroit. Sher fought in the bloody battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg and First Manassas and is one of only a few women known to have served for the duration of the Civil War (or, as people in the South sometimes still call it, “that recent unpleasantry”). After the war, she married a Canadian mechanic, L. H. Seelye, and had three children. She received a government pension for her military service in 1886. That same year, she received a letter from the Secretary of War which acknowledged her as “a female soldier” who had rendered “faithful service in the ranks.” Seelye died in Texas in 1898.
There were many others: Mary Scaberry (Charles Freeman), a private in the Fifty-Second Ohio Infantry, enlisted in Summer 1862 at age 17 but, by November, was admitted to a Lebanon, KY hospital with a fever. Transferred to a Louisville hospital, where she was outed, Scaberry was discharged for “sexual incompatibility.” Albert D. J. Cashier of Illinois (Jennie Irene Hodgers) served four years, receiving a military pension and spending her final days in a a soldiers’ home, only to be outed at death. Florina Budwin and her husband served side-by-side in the Union Army. Loretta Velazquez (Lt. Harry Buford), Satronia Smith Hunt of Iowa, Madame Collier of East Tennessee and many others left home and hearth to serve. Velazquez wrote: “Fear was a word I did not know the meaning of.”
Ironically, the U.S. Army tried to deny that women had served as soldiers at all. When Ida Tarbell of The American Magazine wrote to Adjutant General F. C. Ainsworth in 1909 asking if there were records of woman who served in the Civil War, he denied this, writing that “no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files.”
Sources
http://www.pajamadeen.com/womens-history/bardstown-museum