Category: Civil War Women

Civil War Women
Civil War Women, Women Artists

Lilla Cabot Perry

• Maggie

Portrait Artist and American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry is best-known as an American Impressionist painter, creating landscapes and portraits in a free form manner. Impressionism is characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors. She was greatly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s philosophies, and her friendships with Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro greatly influenced her work. Pissarro acted as a father figure to all four major Post-Impressionists: Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gaugin, and Paul Cezanne. Image: Self Portrait (1890s) By Lilla Cabot Perry Early Years Lydia (Lilla) Cabot was born January 13, 1848 in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest of eight children of Hannah Lowell Jackson Cabot and distinguished surgeon Dr. Samuel Cabot III. The Cabots prominent in Boston society,…

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Activists, Civil War Women

Richmond Bread Riot

• Maggie

Civil Unrest and Activism in the Confederate Capital Image: North Carolina Emigrants: Poor White Folk, by James Henry Beard During the Civil War, refugees like these traveled to Richmond hoping for a better life, but they only added to the overcrowding and lack of provisions that already existed there. A group of working-class women gathered in Belvidere Hill Baptist Church in the Oregon Hill section of Richmond, Virginia on the evening of April 1, 1863. A few had traveled from the outskirts of the city to attend this meeting of working class women. One of the leaders, Mary Jackson, was a peddler and another woman sewed tents to support her family. The women decided to meet the following morning and…

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Civil War Women, Famous Wives, Women in Business

Elizabeth Jarvis Colt

• Maggie

Woman Who Ran the Colt Firearms Factory When firearms manufacturer Samuel Colt died in 1862, majority ownership in the Colt Fire Arms Company passed to his wife, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt. Called the Grande Dame of Connecticut, she worked tirelessly to preserve her husband’s accomplishments and safeguard his legacy. The company continued to thrive under her leadership for almost forty years. Image: Elizabeth Jarvis Hart Colt With her son Caldwell Portrait by Charles Loring Elliott Early Years Elizabeth Hart Jarvis was born October 5, 1826 in Saybrook, Connecticut to Episcopal Minister William Jarvis and Elizabeth Jarvis, the eldest of five children in an affluent and socially prominent family. Samuel Colt, born July 19, 1814, was an inventor and arms manufacturer in…

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Civil War Women, Civil War Women Working

Women Working at the Treasury

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Women at the U.S. Treasury Department Image: Lady Clerks Leaving the Treasury Department at Washington This illustration was published February 18, 1865, in Harper’s Weekly. During the Civil War, the Department of the Treasury in Washington, DC hired women workers to fill clerical positions vacated by men who had left to fight with the Union Army. Until that time, clerking was strictly a male occupation. Believing women were particularly well-suited for the task, the Treasurer of the United States assigned them to hand-cut paper money, usually printed in amounts of four bills per sheet. Backstory Prior to 1790, the ground now covered by magnificent public and private buildings and known as the City of Washington, was part of a Maryland…

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Civil War Hospitals, Civil War Women

Chimborazo Hospital

• Maggie

Largest Military Hospital in the World Image: Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia A man with a crutch looks out upon the long white buildings of Chimborazo Hospital on the hill above in a photograph taken just after the city had fallen to Union forces in April 1865. Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia essentially functioned as a village, complete with bathhouse, soap factory, morgues, and a bakery. Phoebe Yates Pember was one of the first women to serve as a hospital matron during the Civil War. Her memoirs describe in vivid detail her experiences as one of the first women to enter the previously all-male field of medicine in the Confederacy. A Hospital on a Hill Several million men went off…

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Activists, Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Adaline Weston Couzins

• Maggie

Civil War Nurse in St. Louis, Missouri Union Nurse: Adaline Weston Couzins Adaline Weston Couzins was a Union nurse in Missouri. She was one of the Civil War Nurses on Hospital Ships that traveled up and down the Mississippi River, risking her life helping wounded soldiers. A Minie ball struck her in the knee in 1863, but she kept on nursing throughout the war and afterward. She was a woman of great courage and compassion for her fellow men and women. Early Life Adaline Weston was born August 12, 1815, in Brighton, England. At the age of eight, she came to America with her parents. In 1834, Adaline eloped with John Edward Decker Couzins, a carpenter and builder by trade….

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Union Women Spies

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Civil War Women Spies for the Union The Union Army employed several other methods of gathering information about the South during the Civil War, but agents in the field – men and women – were the major source of espionage and intelligence gathering activities. Many agents operated under several different names. Due to the clandestine nature of their work, records were poorly kept or intentionally destroyed and the identity of most of these operatives will never be known. Image: Elizabeth Van Lew Union Spy in Richmond, Virginia Pinkerton’s Women Agents A former sheriff and native of Scotland, Allan Pinkerton had established a detective agency in Chicago in 1850. Pinkerton gained fame early on by foiling a plot to assassinate President…

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Civil War Women, Famous Children

Eleanor Agnes Lee

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Daughter of Confederate General Robert E. Lee The Lee daughters had impressive pedigrees. They were direct descendants of the aristocratic Lees of Virginia and England, as well as George and Martha Washington. Mrs. Robert E. Lee’s father, George Washington Parke Custis, was the first president’s adopted son and the man who established the 1,100-acre plantation called Arlington. Several years later, Custis built Arlington House (1817), the ancestral home of the Custises and Lees on the Potomac River overlooking Washington DC. Agnes Lee Eleanor Agnes Lee, born February 27, 1841, was called Agnes. She was the third of four daughters and the fifth of seven children of Mary Anna Custis and Robert E. Lee, born at the family’s Virginia estate, Arlington….

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Civil War Women, Generals Wives

Ann Eliza Rosecrans

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Wife of Union General William Rosecrans Ann Eliza Hegeman, the daughter of New York City judge Adrian Hegeman, was from an old and prosperous family. William Starke Rosecrans attended West Point, where he excelled in planning military maneuvers and he was considered brilliant in mathematics. He graduated from West Point in 1842, fifth in a class of 56 cadets, which included notable future generals such as Dana Harvey Hill, James Longstreet, and Don Carlos Buell. Ann Eliza Hegeman attended graduation at West Point with friends. After the ceremonies, Rosecrans invited her to go for a walk and they immediately fell in love. William Mathias Lamers, author of The Edge of Glory: A Biography of General William S. Rosecrans (1961), states…

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Civil War Cavalry Women

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Women Who Served in the Civil War Cavalry It is impossible to state with any certainty how many women served as cavalry soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies. The cavalry was considered more glamorous than infantry and artillery, but females who made it in the cavalry had to be excellent horsewomen, in addition to their other soldierly duties. Stories romanticizing their adventurous spirits and extolling their patriotism appeared in the New York Times, the Richmond Examiner and the Chicago Daily Tribune. Image: Federal Cavalry Charge! at Gettysburg Is there a cavalrywoman in this painting? Cavalrywomen Despite the physical strain, a few women are known to have served in the cavalry branches of both the Union and the Confederate armies….

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