When we landed in Charleston, South Carolina that first night, we were greeted by a small group of Marines. Sixty screaming females gathered around one defenseless lance corporal—sixty females from all walks of life. We were shoved on a bus and driven off into the night en route to our final destination—Parris Island, South Carolina. The memories that haunt me most from those first few days are the feelings that were constantly running through my mind. The place, at night, seemed very forbidding and unfriendly. I kept asking myself why I made such a crazy choice as to join the Marine Corps when I lived a relatively good life back in Illinois. Saying I was scared is mild—I was petrified. A lot of the girls cried on the first night. I didn’t because in addition to the fright, I was very anxious to see what lay ahead of me in my new career.

Those words were recorded March of 1979 in a journal I kept during my early days of United States Marine Corps service. I finished my career in April 1999 when I retired as a major from the Marines after twenty years of active service. I saw plenty of change during my tenure and was witness to military women finally coming of age in service to their country. When I joined, about the only thing that was equal between men and women was pay—which was, and still is, an advantage over the civilian sector. But as women, we were not treated equally. I felt that during the first decade of my career the Marine Corps was still tackling the whole issue of women in its ranks. This was despite the fact that the Armed Forces Integration Act of 1948 (Public Law 80-625) formally gave Regular and Reserve status to women in the Armed Forces, while simultaneously creating the combat exclusion laws. By the time of my retirement, however, women and men were equally challenged during training, and similar standards were required of both sexes.

Notwithstanding these bumps in the road, women I served with were honored to be able to give back to the country they love, openly and with the approval of society. Our predecessors were not always as fortunate, and when patriotism and duty nagged at women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some served as nurses and laundresses, but others took to disguise to fight for their country, answering the call to duty in more clandestine ways.

She married Benjamin Gannett on 7 April 1784 in Sharon, Massachusetts. The couple had three known children: Earl, Mary, and Patience. Deborah suffered from the effects of her wound for years following her service, and her death on 29 April 1827 may have been precipitated by the injury.

Proof of Gannett’s service was lost when the British destroyed the War Office in Washington, D.C. in 1814. She had evidently proven who she was before this, however, because she began receiving an invalid pension of $48 per year on 1 January 1803, which was raised to an annual rate of $76.80 on 16 April 1816. On 18 March 1818, Congress passed "An Act to provide for certain persons, engaged in the Land and Naval Service of the United States, in the Revolutionary War," which changed the rules for pensioners and allowed Gannett to receive a full pension of $96 per year after relinquishing her invalid pension. Following her death, her husband Benjamin was left destitute and in ill health and applied to the War Department to receive his wife’s pension until his death. His appeal was successful, but he died in January 1837, before Congress made its final determination in December 1837. In making its decision, the Committee on Revolutionary Pensions stated:

"The committee is aware that there is no act of Congress which provides for any case like the present. The said Gannett was married after the termination of the war of the Revolution, and therefore does not come within the spirit of the third section of the act of 4th July 1836, granting pensions to widows in certain cases; and were there nothing peculiar in this application which distinguishes it from all other applications for pensions, the committee would at once reject the claim. But they believe they are warranted in saying that the whole history of the American Revolution records no case like this, and ‘furnishes no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity, and courage.'"

Because the decision was made following Benjamin Gannett’s death, a special act of Congress dated 7 July 1838 granted the relief to his heirs, who received $466.66.

46th Pennsylvania, Company D: "Charles D. Fuller; detected as being a female; discharged, date unknown."

26th North Carolina (C.S.A.) Company F: "Mrs. L. M. Blaylock; enlisted March 20, 1861; discharged for being a woman." ²

Franklin Thompson was born Sarah Emma Edmonds about 1839 in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. She left home in her teens disguised as a boy to escape an unwelcome arranged marriage. She maintained the disguise, selling Bibles door-to-door as Franklin Thompson and eventually ended up in Flint, Michigan, at the outbreak of the war. President Lincoln’s call for volunteers created a rush to join up in the state of Michigan, and Thompson was caught in the fervor. In April 1861 she enlisted in the Flint Union Greys, which became Company F, 2d Michigan Infantry Regiment.³ Because of her small stature, Thompson was detailed as a nurse and later a mail carrier; her account of her participation in the war claims she was also a spy for a time, although this is not specifically documented in her compiled military service record.⁴ Thompson was held in high regard by her fellow soldiers, who ironically referred to her as "our woman" because of the small size of her boots. Apparently, though, not all of her contemporaries were fooled, as diary entries of fellow Michiganders Jerome John Robbins and William Boston reveal.⁵

Thompson deserted from her unit on 19 April 1863 near Lebanon, Kentucky. By that time she had become quite ill with a fever. She feared discovery if she was sent to the hospital and chose to desert rather than risk the embarrassment of her regiment discovering her true identity. She later reappeared dressed as a woman and served as a civilian nurse with the Christian and Sanitary Commissions for the duration of the war under her birth name of S. Emma Edmonds. On 27 April 1867, Edmonds married fellow Canadian Linus H. Seelye in Cleveland, Ohio. The couple had three children, Linus B., Homer, and Alice Louise, all of whom died young.

In the 1880s, Emma petitioned Congress to remove the deserter stigma from her record. As part of the process, she revealed her true identity to members of her regiment, who rallied to her support. She ultimately received a pension of $12 per month until her death in La Porte, Texas, on 5 September 1898. In its report, the Committee on Invalid Pensions stated:

That though by the rules of war a deserter, yet her course and conduct after shows the same zeal in the service of her country in her proper character as actuated her when she first dedicated herself to the cause which she felt to be the highest and noblest that can actuate man or woman.⁶

Civil War: Lyons Wakeman
The story of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Private Lyons Wakeman, has only recently come to light, primarily because she didn’t survive the war. Wakeman wrote frequent letters to her family during her service as part of the 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers. The letters, along with a daguerrotype of her in uniform, languished in the attic of collateral descendants for more than a century. When Civil War reenactor Lauren Cook Burgess was banned by the National Park Service from participating in reenactments after her true sex was discovered, she set out on a quest to document women soldiers who served as men during the war. The publicity surrounding her cause eventually caught the attention of Mrs. Ruth Goodier, the great-granddaughter of Wakeman’s younger sister. Goodier contacted Burgess and shared the letter collection with her—the only known collection of letters written by a female soldier. Burgess subsequently published the letters, edited and annotated for the benefit of the reader.⁷

Wakeman was born 16 January 1843 in Chenango County, New York, to Harvey Anable Wakeman and Emily Hale. She was the eldest of nine children—seven girls and two boys. Harvey Wakeman was a farmer who had apparently gone into debt by the time Rosetta was in her late teens. Perhaps to lessen the financial strain on her family, or perhaps because there was some rift between family members, Rosetta left home in August 1862 and went to work in male disguise as a boatman for the Chenango Canal. During her first boat trip she met soldiers from the 153rd Regiment who encouraged her to enlist, which she did on 30 August 1862—as Lyons Wakeman. She received an enlistment bounty of $152—worth more than a year’s wages. The 153rd was assigned to guard duty in Alexandria, Virginia, and later Washington, D.C., protecting the nation’s capital against rebel advances.

Wakeman’s first letter was sent home 24 November 1862 from Alexandria. In the letter she explained what she did after she left home, and how she ended up as part of the Union army. She began sending money home, and attempted to mend any broken fences with her comment: "I want to drop all old affray and I want you to do the same and when I come home we will be good friends as ever." Interestingly enough, she signed her early letters with her birth name, making no attempt to hide her identity in case her letters were intercepted. Members of Wakeman’s company may never have suspected she was a woman, but there were relatives and friends concurrently serving in the Union army that she corresponded with and possibly even visited when they were stationed nearby.

The 153rd was transferred to the field in early 1864 and Wakeman engaged in her first battle on 9 April 1864 at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana. She wrote her last letter home five days later from Grand Ecore Landing on the Red River. She wrote:

Our army made an advance up the river to pleasant hill about 40 miles. There we had a fight. The first day of the fight our army got whip[ped] and we had to retreat back about ten miles. The next day the fight was renewed and the firing took place about eight o’Clock in the morning. There was a heavy Cannonading all day and a Sharp firing of infantry. I was not in the first day’s fight but the next day I had to face the enemy bullets with my regiment. I was under fire about four hours and laid on the field of battle all night. There was three wounded in my Co. and one killed.

I feel thankful to God that he spared my life and I pray to him that he will lead me safe through the field of battle and that I may return safe home.

Near the end of the Red River campaign, Wakeman contracted chronic diarrhea, which she died from on 19 June 1864 in the Marine U.S.A. General Hospital in New Orleans. Her true identity was apparently never revealed, as she was buried in Chalmette National Cemetery, New Orleans, with her headstone reading "Lyons Wakeman."

I got through the lines by the aid of the Connecticut mail, and got in just as the division was starting for the Blue Ridge. I followed after that division, and during the engagement at the Blue Ridge I was constantly on hand doing what I could for the wounded and dying. I had a small stock of medicine with me, which I used in administering to the wounded and those who had fallen by the roadside from sunstroke. I even carried water in my shoe to them. I found... plenty of guns, blankets, etc., which I collected and gave to scattering Union soldiers from different regiments, who had been in the battle of Bull Run and had lost their guns, etc. At that time I provided guns and blankets for about three or four hundred soldiers who were on their way to Washington.

While she was busy throwing ammunition into the river, she was taken prisoner by members of the Black Horse Cavalry, who tried to get her to tell them the direction that the Union forces had gone. She pointed in the opposite direction and bluffed by stating that the troops had been reinforced by 30,000 more overnight. She was trying to protect the soldiers that she had assisted with guns and blankets.

She was taken to Manassas Junction where the Confederates tried to put her in a guard house. She refused to go there rather vocally, so they put her in a barn with other Union prisoners. She immediately began tending the wounded, tearing off pieces of her undergarments to wrap wounds. During the four days she was held at Manassas Junction, one of the prisoners, a doctor from the 6th New Jersey Regiment, encouraged Hinsdale to use a pass she claimed to have been given her by Confederate General Beauregard to pass through the lines and take information concerning rebel movements to General Mansfield in Washington. It is unclear why she was allowed to leave the barn, but she used the pass as she walked barefoot all the way to Washington, encountering occasional resistance from soldiers on both sides. She successfully presented the information to General Mansfield and asked to be sent home. The general was very pleased with her efforts, though, and told her she was needed and refused to send her home. He promised to ensure that she was well rewarded for staying.

Hinsdale was reunited with her husband in Arlington, Virginia, and stayed to nurse the sick until the regiment left. She was subsequently sent to General Heintzleman’s headquarters to set up a hospital, where she remained as a nurse for the duration of the war.⁸

Following the war, the Hinsdales returned to their home on Fort Street in Detroit and resumed running a boarding house.⁹ In the late 1880s, both Hinsdales applied for pensions for their military service. Hiram claimed several disabilities, but apparently never received any money from the government before his death 13 December 1894.¹⁰ Jane was more fortunate. By a Special Act of Congress approved on 23 February 1891, she was placed on the pension role at the rate of $12 per month. The Senate Report that preceded the approval of the act stated:

The petitioner, Jane Hinsdale, served as a nurse for the Union forces in the vicinity of Washington from the beginning to the end of the war. Her services were of a very high order. She was taken prisoner at Manassas Junction and almost denuded herself of her underclothing to make bandages for the wounded Union soldiers in the barn used as hospital and prison by the Confederates. She suffered great hardships, and is now an old woman in reduced circumstances. Her petition is substantiated by officers and soldiers who received her care. We append it in full as a remarkable statement worthy of preservation, and submit the accompanying bill for her relief, with a recommendation that it do pass.¹¹

Jane Hinsdale died of senile degeneration 23 November 1900, in St. Mary’s Hospital in Detroit. Her passing was acknowledged in a mortality report in the Detroit Times, as well as a paragraph mentioning her Civil War service in the Detroit Free Press.¹² She was certainly not the only nurse of her era who provided services above and beyond the call of duty, but her story is little known. Even her tombstone shows no indication of her selfless service to her country.¹³

Women in the military have served with honor throughout U.S. history, giving back to their country even in times when they were not wanted. Researching the histories of these pioneering women has put my early days in the Marine Corps into perspective. It even makes those days when we were treated so differently than the men seem like less of a struggle.

2. William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861-1865: A Treatise on the Extent and Nature of the Mortuary Losses in the Union Regiments, with Full and Exhaustive Statistics Compiled from the Official Records on File in the State Military Bureaus and at Washington (Albany, NY: Albany Publishing Company, 1889), part of The Civil War CD-ROM (Carmel, IN: Guild Press of Indiana, 1997).

3. Betty Fladeland, "Alias Franklin Thompson," Michigan History 42 (December 1958): 435, 438, 439.

4. Compiled Military Service Record for Franklin Thompson, 2d Michigan Infantry; Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780s to 1917; Record Group 94; National Archives Building, Washington, DC; S. Emma E. Edmonds, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps and Battle-fields (Hartford: W. S. Williams & Co., 1865).

5. Betty Fladeland, "New Light on Sarah Emma Edmonds Alias Franklin Thompson," Michigan History 47 (December 1963): 357–362.

6. Fladeland, "Alias Franklin Thompson," 460.

7. Lauren Cook Burgess, ed., An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 1862–1864 (Pasadena, Md.: The Minerva Center, 1994).

8. Pension file of Jane Hinsdale; SC 550198; Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Veterans Who Served in the Army and the Navy Mainly in the Civil War and the War With Spain, 1861–1934; Record Group 15; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.

9. Detroit city directories for 1888, 1890, and 1892–1901.

10. Pension file for Hiram Hinsdale; SC 545077; Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Veterans Who Served in the Army and the Navy Mainly in the Civil War and the War With Spain, 1861–1934; Record Group 15; National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.; in the Detroit City Directory for 1895, Hiram Hinsdale’s death date is recorded as 13 December 1894 (aged 69).

11. Pension file for Jane Hinsdale.

12. "Mortality Report," Detroit Times, Detroit, Michigan, 26 November 1900, page 2, column 2; "Old Army Nurse Dead," Detroit Free Press, Detroit, Michigan, 24 November 1900, page 4, column 7.

13. Hiram and Jane Hinsdale are buried in Section 10, Lot 68 at Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit.