Civil War History - General DiscussionFor Discussions on Civil War Era Personalities, Politics, Issues, Campaigns, Battles, and more. Serious Civil War Discussions Only Please! All other posts will be deleted.
Harkin and her mother were attached to the 17th Wisconsin. ". . . we were all very eager to go to the front." They first traveled to the capital at Madison, then to St. Louis ". . . .at every station, women and children vied with each other in seeing who could do the most for the soldier ladies. In Chicago they treated the boys to cake, coffee, and fruit while we nurses were almost smothered with flowers." From Benton Barracks, they went to the field at Shiloh where they set up a hospital.
"There was a great lack of hospital stores, and we were all on short rations. On account of the masked batteries we found it hard to get supplies, and for one week all we nurses had to eat was hard-tack. Not one of us would touch the small store that we had for the sick and we were nearly starved at the end of that time, when a large steamer brought in an abundance of provisions, sent by Wisconsin for her soldiers. Then followed long, weary days and night watches with poor suffering men. There was almost every form of sickness and we had to do all the cooking, and we had to keep the soldiers clean and the hospital in order."
Like other women, Harkin found the Southern backwoods a dangerous place. One day she requested permission to go for a horseback ride, and although warned of danger, she soon found herself and her orderly on a "pleasant road, shaded with beautiful trees." "My horse was fresh and eager to go, and we dashed on. At last we saw soldiers; but they were our own men, and of course I was not afraid of them. As I flew past, as fast as my horse could go, I thought I heard voices calling but paid no attention and rode on for as much as two hours; when I came to a large ravine, that cut the road in two. I stopped, looked down into the dark gully, then raised my eyes to the opposite hill, where I saw a rude farm-house, and a white cow grazing in the field. I thought I would cross the gully and see if I could buy a drink of milk. I had gone about half way down the hill, when at the bottom I saw five men in the well-known "butternut" uniform.
My breath almost left my body as the foremost said, "Halt! You are my prisoner." He walked toward me, and in another minute would have had my horse by the bridle. "I will die first," was my thought as I jerked the rein, and my dear old horse turned with a jump. "Shoot the spy!" they shouted. I was in truth flying for dear life. They fired three shots after me, but I must have gone like the wind, for I heard no more from them. When I reached the picket lines the little orderly was almost sure I was "gobbled," as they called being taken prisoner. The officer gave me a scolding, and told me how three of our men were killed there a short time before. I found my father and mother very anxious about me, and I myself was almost sick with fright."
Harkin finally took ill and resigned the service. Her mother remained serving in Corinth and Memphis hospitals. (486-494)
"Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king." ~Thomas Hardy~
Lucy Ann Cox is seated in the center of this photograph taken at a Company A reunion.
LUCY ANN COX was the daughter of Jesse White, the practical printer and Publisher of the Fredericksburg Weekly Advertiser of the 1850’s. James A. Cox, an employee for the paper, lived with the White’s and married Lucy before the war (although one newspaper later said that Lucy was married after the beginning of the war; the reporter was the victim of Lucy’s seldom used temper).
When James Cox Volunteered for Co. A of the 30th Va. Regiment and was sent to Aquia Creek, Lucy found her way to camp and refused to be parted from her soldier husband and when the army found it impossible to be rid of her, she was allowed to remain with the company and was regularly furnished rations until the end of the war.
She accompanied the regiment to Manassas to join General Beauregard’s Army, enduring without a murmur the fatigue and privations of the long and wearisome march there and back to Aquia Creek. In March 1862 they were ordered to North Carolina, and from that date to the close of the war she was in the field—in every campaign, on every march—ever at her husband’s side to minister to him when sick, to comfort him when dispirited.
Her devotion won the praise and highest admiration from every rugged soldier and she became known by the sobriquet “PAWNEE” throughout Pickett's Division, but it was the members of Co. A that she fed when they were hungry; sheltered when they were exposed; and patched and washed for them when there was no one else.
When the war was over, and the Cox’a returned to Fredericksburg,the soldiers of Maury Camp of Confederate Veterans elected her by acclamation as honorary member of the camp and presented her with a Camp Badge.
She wore the badge prominently and proudly at all reunions and on Memorial Day.
Though Lucy became a victim of dropsy and found it exceedingly difficult to get about, she was in attendance at the reunion of Co. A at Alum Spring in August 1885, when J. K. Graeme, a photographer ,was present and photographed the company. She participated at the table where the solids and sweetmeats were spread and enjoyed observing the music, dancing, croquet, swinging, target shooting and most of all, participating the relating of stories of the “tented field.”
She was also present at the reunion at Alum Spring in September 1886. The day was pleasant enough until time for the parties to return to their respective homes . Capt. John K. Anderson had obtained a wagon and with considerable help, managed to get the overly large Lucy on one edge of the seat. The road being an unused one and badly washed by recent freshets, and the weight being unevenly distributed, the wagon upset and spilled out the occupant, who, for a time, caused a quite a racket. She was collected with whole bones, but the wagon was more or less demolished.
The reporter had hoped to have a pleasant interview with the lady, but her indignant looks forbid he should venture into her presence until the next reunion when he would be surrounded by comrades.
Lucy Ann Cox died on December 17, 1891, aged sixty-four, and was buried in the Fredericksburg Confederate Cemetery. Prof. Bowering’s twenty-piece military band, in full uniform, provided the measured tread from the Methodist church to the cemetery, playing the funeral march. After a short religious service, the band played a sweetly solemn dirge.
"If all hearts were open and all desires known - as they would be if people showed their souls - how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place!" ~Thomas Hardy~
"My whole heart and soul went out toward the sick soldiers. My days were mostly spent in visiting the hospitals.
At first the larger ones attracted me because there seemed to be so many sufferers and more need of nurses. My timid advances (never amounting to a direct application as a nurse) were condescendingly smiled down by the surgeons in charge. My youthful appearance was against me. Besides, there really was no need for other nursing in many of the State hospitals, notably that of Louisiana, than the angelic ministrations of the Sisters of Charity, whose tireless vigils knew no end, whose skill and efficiency, as well as their constant devotion, environed the patients committed to their care.
Occasionally I was allowed the blessed privilege of fanning a sick hero or of moistening parched lips or bathing fevered brows. But somebody always came whose business it was to do these things, and I was set aside. One day, however, by a happy chance, I found in a ward of one of the hospitals a poor fellow who seemed to have been left to die. So forlorn, so feeble, so near death did he seem, that my heart yearned over him, for he was only a boy, and I knew he was some mother’s darling. He had, like many other soldiers, been unwilling to go to a hospital, and remaining in camp while broken out with measles, took cold and provoked an attack of pneumonia.
In addition to this, terrible abscesses had formed under each ear, and his eyes were swollen and suppurating. His surgeon said there was little hope of his recovery; none at all unless he could be removed to some more quiet place, and receive unremitting care and watchfulness as well as excellent nursing. "Can he be removed if I promise to fulfill all these conditions?" said I. "It is a risk, but his only chance," replied D. ___. "Then I will go at once and prepare a place."
As I spoke the suffering boy grasped my had with all his feeble strength, as if afraid to let me leave him. Reassuring him as well as I could, I rushed off to the "Soldiers’ Rest," where I knew I should find friends ready and willing to help me. My tale was soon told to the ladies in charge, who at once and with all their hearts entered into my plans. One vacant cot temptingly clean and white was moved into a secluded corner and assigned to me for the use of my "sick boy." The loan of an ambulance, readily obtained, facilitated his removal. That same evening I had the satisfaction of seeing him laid carefully upon the comfortable bed so kindly prepared by the ladies of the Soldiers’ Rest, exhausted, but evidently not worse for the change.
Right here began my career as a nurse of Confederate soldiers. This was my first patients,--my very own,--to have and to hold until the issues of life and death should be decided. All facilities were acceded me by the ladies. Dr. Little gave his most careful attention and his greatest skill, but the nursing, the responsibility, was mine.
I may as well state that I came off with flying colors, earning the precious privilege, so ardently desired, for being enrolled among those ready for duty and to be trusted. My patient recovered, and returned to his command, the --- Mississippi Regiment. His name was D. Babers, and twenty years after the war I met him once more, ---a stalwart, bearded man, as unlike as possible the pale young soldier who had lived in my memory. His delight and gratitude and that of his family seemed unbounded, and so I found the bread once cast upon the waters very sweet when returned to me "after many days."
Finding that my desultory wanderings among the large hospitals were likely to result in little real usefulness, and that the ladies attached to the Solders Rest would be glad of my help, I became a regular attendant there. This delightful place of refuge for the sick and wounded was situated high up on Clay Street, not very far from one of the camps and parade-grounds. A rough little school-house it had been transformed into a bower of beauty and comfort by loving hands. The walls, freshly whitewashed, were adorned with attractive pictures.
The windows were draped with snowy curtains tastefully looped back to admit the summer breeze or carefully drawn to shade the patient, as circumstances required. The beds were miracles of whiteness, and clean linen sheets in almost every case, draped and covered them. Softest pillows in slips of odorous linen supported the restless heads of the sick. By the side of each cot stood a small table (one or two old-fashioned stands of solid mahogany among them). Upon these were spread fine napkins. Fruit, drinks, etc., were set upon them, not in coarse, common crockery but in delicate china and glass. Nothing was too good for the soldiers. . . . .
I do not believe that a squad of sick soldiers arrived in Richmond, at least during the first year of the war, who were not discovered and bountifully fed shortly after their arrival. In this case waiter after waiter of food was sent in, first from the house of Mr. Yarborough and afterwards by all the neighborhood. Hospital supplies having been ordered as soon as it was known the sick men were expected, all necessaries were soon at hand, while the boxes referred to supplied many luxuries.
The large room into which all these were huddled presented for days a scene of "confusion worse confounded." The contents of two of the largest boxes were dumped upon the floor, the boxes themselves serving one as a table for the drugs, the other as a sort of counter where the druggist quickly compounded prescriptions, which the surgeon as hastily seized and personally administered. Carpenters were set at work; but of course, all shelves, etc., could not be magically produced, so we placed boards across barrels, arranging in piles the contents of the boxes for each use. Mrs. Hopkins, sitting upon a box, directed these matters, while I had my hands full attending to the poor fellows in the wards where they had been placed.
Four of our sick died that night. I had never in my life witnessed a death scene before, and had to fight hard to keep down the emotion which would have greatly impaired my usefulness. . . .
Mrs. Hopkins and I thought exactly alike regarding the disposition of the delicacies continuously sent from all points in Alabama for the sick and wounded. None but the sick should have them. Nothing but the simple though plentiful rations were ever served at the meals, which the resident surgeons and druggists shared with me. Yet, by the never-ceasing kindness of friends outside, I was well supplied with luxuries enough for myself, and to share with my messmates each day.
Having the care and responsibility of so many sick, my time was fully occupied. I seldom went out. I could not stop to talk to visitors, but often led kind ladies to the bedsides of those whom I knew would enjoy and be benefited by their bright presence and kindly words, as well as by their offerings of flowers, fruit or dainties.
Amid disease and suffering, battling always with death (too often, alas! the conqueror), I was yet happy and content. The surgeons were skillful and devoted; the means at hand to supply the wants, even the caprices of my patients, as soon as expressed.
"When things come to the worse, they generally mend." ~Susanna Moodie~
"Fannie Beer, Memories: A Record of Personal Experiences and Adventures during Four Years of War, 1889" (Women in the Civil War)
Elizabeth Scott Neblett (1833-1917). Elizabeth (Lizzie) Scott Neblett, diarist, was born in Raymond, Mississippi, to James and Sarah (Lane) Scott on January 17, 1833. In 1839, when she was six years old, the family moved to Houston, Texas. The following year they moved to Fanthorp Springs, three miles east of the site of present Anderson in Grimes County. The area was sparsely populated, and the first school Lizzie attended was held in a small log cabin. On May 25, 1852, she married William H. Neblett, a Texas farmer, planter, and aspiring attorney.
The couple spent their first three years of married life in Anderson and moved to Corsicana in 1855. There William Neblett practiced law, edited the Navarro Express , and farmed property three miles outside of town. The family returned to Grimes County in December 1861.
Mrs. Neblett kept a diary from March 1852, two months before her marriage, until May 1863, shortly after her husband left to serve the Confederacy. She wrote, "I can never gain worldly honors. Fame can never be mine. I am a woman ! A woman! I can hardly teach my heart to be content with my lot." She found one of her greatest hardships to be childbirth; she had six children and asked her husband to let her use artificial birth control. She was an avid reader of literature and poetry and saved copies of favorite poems and stories in bulging scrapbooks. Her diary, combined with her letters, scrapbooks, and a memoir she wrote about her deceased husband, provide a picture of a mid-nineteenth-century Texas woman. Following her husband's death in 1871, she lived most of her remaining years in Anderson, where she died on September 28, 1917. Her diary and letters were published in 2001.
"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." ~Margaret Atwood~
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Irene Taylor Allen, Saga of Anderson-The Proud Story of a Historic Texas Community (New York: Greenwich, 1957). Kathryn G. Berger, The Diary of Lizzie Scott Neblett, March 16, 1852 to May 1, 1863 (Honors thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1981). Erika L. Murr, ed., A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett, 1852-1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001). Lizzie Scott Neblett Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. June Melby Benowitz
Laura Keene(1820-1873) Actress and theatrical Producer. Born in London, her original name was believed to have been Mary Moss. She married in 1846 or about, to John Taylor, who was later banished to Australia. The stage was how she supported herself and she made her London debut in 'The Lady of Lyons' in October 1851 under the name of Laura Keene. She joined the company of Madame Vestris in 1851 and gained wife reputation in comedies and extravaganzas produced at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London. Her American debut was in New York in 1852 at Wallack's Lyceum. She left Wallack's to appear under her own management at the Charles Street Theatre in Baltimore in 1853. She traveled to to San Francisio in 1854 at the Metropolian Theatre.
After a tour with Edwin Booth in Australia she returned to San Francisco and tried her management and production with the staging of a number of succesful productions. New York saw her return in 1855 to play the Metropolitan Theatre which she renamed the Laura Keene's Varieties Theatre. The following year she moved into a newly contructed theatre and continued her productions in the Laura Keene Theatre, for eight years, producing her own plaus. She was the first woman in the United States to achieve the status of producer.
The members of her company included such eminent actors as Joseph Jefferson, Dion Boucicault, and Edwin A. Booth, One of her great successes was the production of "Our American Cousin". It premired in New York in 1858 and had a record run. She was on the stage in Ford's Theatre in her production of "Our American Cousin", the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, April 15th, 1865, and she recognized John Wilkes Booth as the assassin. She gave up her theatre in May 1863. In 1872 she helped to found and edit, " The Fine Arts magazine. She died in Montclair, New Jersey on November 4th, 1873.
"I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely." ~Charles Dickens~
I have enjoyed this thread very much. I'd like to add one of my favorite ladies of the War for Southern Independence era. Her name is Sally Louisa Tompkins and the fact that she was an officer in the Confederate Army makes her unique, as she was the only female commissioned officer, but it's her humanitarian acts that truly make her worthy of remembering. Her hospital treated more than 1300 wounded soldiers, yet only 73 of them died. Sally's hospital saved appx. 95% of it's patients under her care. That is incredible odds for the time.
Sally Louisa Tompkins, 1833-1916
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 First 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. http://ehistory.osu.edu/world/PeopleView.Cfm?PID=77
I have also read that Sally remained a spinster all her life, in spite of numerous proposals. Many of those she nursed back to health asked for her hand and she would joke, "Poor fellows, they aren't yet well from their fevers".
My mother, Mrs. Catherine Ladd, whose name may be recalled by hundreds of her old pupils throughout the South as one of the most noted and successful teachers of her day, gave up her loved vocation in the beginning of the struggle between the States and devoted herself wholly to the cause of the Confederacy. She had lived in Winnsboro for twenty years where she had a established a large and prominent institution of learning. Her literary talent was recognized as that among the best. Of her poems one noted (....) said: "They are sweet, smooth and flowing, particularly so, but, like Scotch music, their gayest notes are sad." In her childhood days she had been at one time, a playmate of Edgar Allen Poe. Perhaps she caught some inspiration for her poems from these early associations.
She was also greatly gifted as a play writer, and her papers on education, home manufactories and the encouragement of white labor showed that she realized long before the war that the prosperity of the South would depend ultimately upon the latter.
When the dark war cloud arose in its fury in 1861 this grand woman closed her school, laid aside her pen and took up her needle, and flung her doors ajar for the soldiers to enter.
She was president of the Soldiers' Aid Association all during the war and by her untiring exertions kept it well supplied with clothes.
Once when a gentleman friend said to her: " The first time I ever saw you, you were under my father's kitchen looking for old iron vessels to send off to make shells to kill Yankees with," the old lady seemed to warm up to the old war spirit, and replied: "Oh, yes; and I also sent my full set of German tableware to be melted into bullets and my fine telescope to the officers. It was one with which you could see thirty miles.
She was one of the originators of the Confederate flag. Those were busy days and nights for her, but her energy never grew weary, and she never was too tired to lend her personal supervision to any benevolent work.
At the last, when we lived in dire dread of "the Yankees coming through," she still showed her noble patriotism. Although but a mere girl at the time, I can distinctly recall those dark, miserable days when we listened anxiously for the unwelcome intruders -- how, with almost bated breath, we watched each night the glowing fires of our beautiful Columbia and numbers of country homes around us. The troubles and anxieties of those gloomy times had cast their dark shadowed pall over us, and we lived in hourly expectation of our ultimate ruin.
Oh! Was it not enough that our fathers, brothers and all near and dear to us should be lain on the sacrificial altar? No, this could not satiate the unrelenting fury of the terrible war fiend.
The torch of the barbarians from the North, as we viewed Sherman and his brand-bearing followers, must come with their destructive work, leaving in their tracks only standing chimneys, grim sentinels over blackened ruins where once were the comfortable homes and happy firesides of a brave generous people--monuments to Sherman's relentless pursuit of war, in which a Nero might have glorified, from which a Washington or a Lee would have shrunk in horror.
Rumors were afloat that they had orders not to burn our town, and as they swooped down upon us like wild Indians, we had this for a hope--a hope alas! too soon to fade into an echoless past.
My mother's house was ordered to be guarded. My father had painted a large, handsome Masonic chart, which stood on an easel in the parlor.
When the crack and the snap of the fire was first heard and we could see the red flames leaping upward and house after house succumb, suddenly we noticed a Federal officer ride up to our gate, quickly dismounting, dash into the house, and, securing this chart, hurriedly give orders to some of his men to dig a hole in the garden, place between mattresses and bury it.
Recognizing in this man a member of the Masonic fraternity, mother asked him to follow her, and together they rushed into the already blazing Masonic hall and saved the Masonic jewels. She anxiously and frantically sought the charter, but was prevented from securing it by the smoke and flames, knowing as she did that leaving her own home for only these few moments meant the loss of all her own property, including the literary works of thirty years. We can but say it was only one instance of her entire unselfishness.
The flames roared and crackled and spread with desperate rapidity, devouring everything within reach. Only too vividly can I now recall those terrible scenes. I can still see the glowing blaze which seemed to reach the lurid heavens, hear the cries of terror-stricken women, shrieking children, groans of slaves, all commingled with the taunts and curses of a relentless enemy, who filled with liquors, acted more like demons than human beings. Swiftly as her feet would carry her, my brave mother put the box containing the jewels in a place of safety and returned to her own house which was by this time burning. The officer ordered his men to carry out our piano, which they did with the loss of one of its legs. Strange to say, the only thing saved of Mrs. Ligon's piano was one leg, and it was a counterpart of mother's.
I have in my house the old melodian which did service in the Episcopal Church for many years. While this sacred edifice was burning some of the heartless vandals carried it out into an open space, and as one of their lawless band defiled its virgin keys by playing some uncouth tune, the others leaped and danced like heathen savages--danced while our women cried for hopeless mercy.
In 1891 mother was stricken totally blind, but even thereafter she could not fold her hands in idleness. Her pen has even since brought forth many sweet poems. The following is one among her last, written in 1898:
Though our way be dark and dreary,
Though life's trials press us sore,
Thou hast mansions for us ready,
Homes where troubles come no more.
O, my Saviour, guide me, watch me,
Lead me by Thy loving hand,
Let me feel that Thou art near me,
Until I reach the Promised Land.
When the shades of eve are closing,
And the hour of death draws near,
Let me feel Thy arms around me,
I will cross without a fear.
By faith I'll see my home of rest
In that glorious land afar;
I will hear the angels singing,
"Come! the gates of Heaven ajar!"
"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!"~Charles Dickens~
Augusta Evans Wilson was an author whose books have been among America's best sellers. She was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1835, and moved with her parents by covered wagon to San Antonio, Texas when she was a young girl. Later, she and her family moved to Mobile, Alabama, where, at the age of 15, she wrote her first book, Inez, A Tale of the Alamo.
At the age of 18, she wrote her second book, Beulah, which sold over 22,000 copies and established her as Alabama's first professional author. But St. Elmo was to be her most famous novel. Hotels, steamboats, cigars, and even towns were named for it. Literary critics were less than kind, however. One wrote, "the trouble with the heroine of St. Elmo was that she swallowed an unabridged dictionary." This turned out to be a compliment, in spite of the critics, the public loved the idealized heroines and heroes, the eloquent marriage proposals and stern punishments of her novel. St. Elmo was adapted for the stage and screen and ranks as one of the 19th Century's most popular novels.
Augusta Evans Wilson also was the author Macaria and Vashti. The success of all her novels earned her fame throughout the United States and she financially benefited as well.
During the Civil War, Augusta Evans nursed the sick at Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay, and visited the troops at Chicamauga. She dedicated one of her novels to the brave soldiers of the South.
Augusta Evans married wealthy Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson and moved her favorite writing desk to his estate, Ashland, on Springhill Avenue in Mobile. Here she entertained and, following Madame Le Vert's reign, was considered Mobile's First Lady.
Augusta Evans Wilson died in 1909 and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery. Her epitaph reads in part: "What has she left? Love, friends, devoted as few mortals can claim. A nation bereft." She truly was a woman with the American spirit.
"I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest." ~Charles Dickens~
Florena Budwin, wife of a Pennsylvania soldier of the Civil War, disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Union Army to be near her husband. They were captured and imprisoned at the infamous Andersonville Prison where her husband died. She was then transferred to Florence, S.C., where her identity was revealed. She remained at the prison to care for Union soldiers, finally dying of illness in 1865. She was buried at Florence National Cemetery and is believed to be the first woman buried in a National Cemetery.