Category: Generals Wives

Wife of Union General Thomas Francis Meagher Elizabeth Townsend was born in New York September 20, 1830, the daughter of Peter and Caroline Parish Townsend of Monroe, New York. Thomas Francis Meagher, born in Ireland August 3, 1823, was an Irish nationalist, an American politician and a Union Army general during the Civil War. In his younger years he was an Irish revolutionary, fighting for Ireland’s independence from British rule. Image: Louis Lang’s Return of the 69th (Irish) Brigade, N.Y.S.M., From the Seat of War shows General Meagher (right center) tipping his hat to the crowd (N.Y.S.M. stands for New York State Militia) He was known as ‘Meagher of the Sword’ due to his fiery revolutionary speeches. In 1848, Thomas…

Wife of Union General Arthur MacArthur, Jr. Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur was the wife of Arthur MacArthur, Union general and Medal of Honor recipient for his actions at the Battle of Missionary Ridge, and the mother of General Douglas MacArthur, one of the most highly decorated American soldiers in World War I and supreme allied commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II, reaching the rank of a five-star General of the Army. Image: Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur With son West Point Cadet Douglas MacArthur, 1899 Mary Pinkney Hardy, always known as Pinky, was born on May 22, 1852, at her family’s plantation, Riveredge, just outside of Norfolk, Virginia. Her father, Thomas Asbury Hardy, migrated to Norfolk in…

Wife of Union General Abel Streight Lovina McCarthy Streight (1830-1910) accompanied her husband, Union Brigadier General Abel Streight in the Western Theater throughout the Civil War. Streight is best known for Streight’s Raid through Tennessee and northern Alabama. His mission was foiled when CSA General Nathan Bedford Forrest surrounded the Union cavalry and took Streight and the majority of his brigade to Libby Prison, from which Streight later escaped. He was restored to his command and continued to serve for the balance of the war. Image: This portrait of Lovina McCarthy Streight hangs in the Indiana Statehouse Lovina McCarthy was born 1830 in Steuben County, New York. Abel Streight was also born on June 17, 1828, in Steuben County, New…

Wife of Lt. Colonel Walter Herron Taylor: Aide to General Robert E. Lee Elizabeth Selden Saunders was the daughter of United States Navy Captain John L. Saunders and Martha Bland Selden Saunders During the Civil War, she lived during the war with the family of Lewis Crenshaw in Richmond, Virginia, where she worked at the Confederate Mint and the Confederate Medical Department. Image: A week after Appomattox, a series of photographs were taken on the back porch at General Robert E. Lee’s home in Richmond by Mathew Brady’s firm. As General Lee wore his uniform for the last time, he posed with his oldest son Major General George Washington Custis Lee and Colonel Walter Taylor (right), husband of Elizabeth Saunders…

Wife of Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles Mary Jane Hale was born June 18, 1817, in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the daughter of Elias White Hale and Jane Mullhallan Hale. Her father graduated from Yale College in 1794, and practiced law in Mifflin and Centre Counties, Pennsylvania. Gideon Welles was born July 1, 1802, in Glastonbury, Connecticut. He was a member of the seventh generation of his family in America. His original immigrant ancestor, Thomas Welles, arrived in 1635 and was the only man in Connecticut’s history to hold all four top government offices: governor, deputy governor, treasurer, and secretary. Welles earned a degree at the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Norwich, Vermont. He studied law, but soon…

Wife of Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm Half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln, Emilie Todd Helm first came to the White House in December 1863, after the death of her thirty-two-year-old husband, Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm, in the Battle of Chickamauga. (Most of the children of their father’s second marriage sided with the Confederacy.) Emilie Todd was born November 11, 1836, daughter of Robert Smith Todd and Elizabeth Humpreys Todd of Lexington, Kentucky. She was born into a wealthy family with exceptional advantages in both education and culture, which was afforded to few ladies of her time. Emilie was 18 years younger than her half-sister Mary Todd Lincoln. Robert Todd was a prominent Lexington banker and patriarch of a growing…