More ' Maybe's ', Kind Of Fun, Female Soldiers

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
Yes, obviously nothing ' fun ' about the subject, but I have a little game going with myself on occasion these days, which is ' spot the female '. I am POSITIVE there are a ton of men in these, but saved photos which seems at least possible as far as there being a question. I'm a little happy none of these folks are alive to be aware of conjecture in the event they are men, however. Be a little tough on the ego.

Some- seem a tad obvious, no? One, I think maybe the first one, has hands folded in lap, but in a way which seems distinctly feminine- fingers oddly laced, not in a masculine way.

cw maybe folded hands.jpg

cw maybe2.jpg
cw maybe3.jpg
cw maybe4.jpg
cw maybe5.jpg
cw maybe6.jpg
cw maybe7.jpg
cw maybe8wow.jpg
cw maybe9.jpg
cw maybe10.jpg
cw maybe11.jpg
cw maybe12.jpg
cw maybe13.jpg
cw maybe14.jpg
cw maybe15.jpg
 

Attachments

  • cw maybe.jpg
    cw maybe.jpg
    105.5 KB · Views: 506
I remember seeing the last image off of the LoC's flickr page, and I knew, knew that had to be a female soldier. I showed the pic around the office where I was working at the time, and most of my coworkers (all pretty knowledgeable about the Civil War) did think the soldier could be female.
 
Jpk these are great photos and yes to me there are some that look like women too me too.do any have the year the photo was taken.It seems from the news paper articles written, that women serving disguise as men was more except able as the war continued.
 
7th, I know right? The hand backward on the hip like that, I thought WAIT a second- she's a little obvious and if this is a guy, that is totally going to get him beaten up on the playground. It was not an enlightened era, although the more I read about men in combat and their closeness, it does sound as if nothing at all made a scrap of difference when it came to how they viewed each other. Could be wrong, I'm not one of them, you just read how they regarded each other and it seems to have been respectful and beyond mere friendship across the board, you know?

I do not mean to be rude, or off-color, please excuse, but one of the aspects of being a female soldier would have been how to flatten the chest- and in some of these photos, you just seem to be able to follow an inevitable curve to the brass buttons, a fold or two in fabric where it's not natural to just fabric hanging, a really baggy coat buttoned well up- the hip line wider than a man's would be ( not always a great way to tell, some females have teeny kinda boy hips, but pretty darn good mostly ), and female mannerisms. One of these, the fingers are draped over the side of the chair, closed together rather gracefully- not sure a man would naturally assume that position, would he? The oddly interlaced fingers in the first shot- that hand backward on hip, and gosh- the little person Samwise noticed in an earlier posting on Flickr.I'd have thought a boy of that stature would be ALL boy, you know what they're like. I have 3- at that age, pretty puffed up, there's some testosterone flying around apparent in their stance and mannerisms even in photos. I suppose that particular person, if a boy, may have been just scared- who could blame him.

That soldier DOES look like Paula Poundstone,whoa! Hope she's not around ' up there ' to mind the comparison, poor thing, getting saddled with that. Think the tightened belt is pretty suspect, poor guy if it is a man, no? Very good figure for a female, less so for a guy.
 
Every single one of those pictures are Males.What you are looking at, for the most part, are boys. 16-20 year old boys.
or, to say it another way, not a single one of those soldiers are female.
If you were to find every "effeminate" soldier in the ACW, the bandwidth of this site would run out.
Mannerisms, language, physical presentation, physical characteristics and society as a whole was more "genteel" and "feminine" than it is now....though the trend IS reversing back to that now (but that's for a different day)
 
Last edited:
I must say the pic that jumped out at me the most was of the "couple". Would love to see a picture of this man and his wife after the war to make a comparison but that one sure says "husband & wife" to me.
 
Mostly teenage boys. I think the pink cheeks make me want to think 'woman.' Changed the photos to B&W and I think differently. The person in photo 4 has long hands, made me think of Count Orlok (Max Schreck) in Nosferatu (1922). (Actually 4 and 5 look like the same person.)
nosferatu_1922_max_schreck.jpg

The person in photo 6 is identified as
Private James M. Bash of Company E, 67th Pennsylvania Volunteers in uniform with bayoneted musket
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.36875/
 
Thank you! And ohhhh no, apologies to his family, I'm glad he's not around. Poor guy. No disrespect intended Pvt. Bash, although the women did ' Fight like demons. When the stories pop up, there hasn't been one where she's been behond a tree, buffing her nails or holding her hands over her ears because the nasty guns are too loud. It's not genuinely an insult.

Hmm, not sure I'd feel the photo above was questionable- in color would merely make me bilious. A poser is a poser, male, female, 1922 or 1863, or 2013. This Count fellow seems to have been one of them, if he's not Hollywood. :smile: Wonder what his choice in dates looked like?

I don't think it's quite fair to say across the board, well, all of them are flat-out male. Possible, but as much conjecture as saying all of them are women. Also think females have a slightly better shot at spotting other women than men do- and nobody go up a wall at me saying this, it isn't meant as a kind of ' war between the sexes ' statement, bet it's true. If you read a good few of the accounts of these female soldiers- they spotted each other on a regular basis- not sure if anyone picked up on that. Kept each other's secrets in the midst of all those men, just had the ability to say ' Ah- there you are ', when men did not. Obviously, as I said at the beginning of the thread, when I said in capitol letters ' I'm POSITIVE ' some of these were men, I did not hit all of them, bet there's one or two in here.

You know, now I'm distracted by those fingernails. Usually seen in women who get a bug in their ear to grow them- HOW do they do normal, everyday functions with those things? I mean use Charmin and still be clean.
 
Number 3, Andy's Paula's grgreatgrandmother, was used as a photo somewhere to illustrate female soldiers in disguise. WISH I could re-find it, the premise there was the shape of the hips in relation to the rest of the body from what I remember.
 
I must say the pic that jumped out at me the most was of the "couple". Would love to see a picture of this man and his wife after the war to make a comparison but that one sure says "husband & wife" to me.

Me too. Some of the others I think are probably men, and a few of them, my jury is out. I wouldn't rely on black and white photos to say, "Oh, well, obviously a man," either. I've had two tintypes taken, and in both of them, the darker hues make me look more masculine, not less. If anything, I think a woman would have an easier time passing in a photo than in real life, which is part of what makes me wonder about the ones posted here.

As far as the couple, is it just me, or does the possible woman on the right look like Amelia Earhart? We may have not only a case of hidden gender, but hidden time travel!

Expired Image Removed
 
They could also be brother and sister. There were some sisters who joined with their brothers. "One was Frances Hook who was orphaned at age of three and sent to live with her older brother in Chicago. When war broke out, Frances and her brother enlisted in the 65th Illinois "Home Guards". Frances enlisted under the name of Frank Miller. A three month enlistment was served and no one knew she was a girl. She then enlisted in the 90th Illinois and was subsequently taken prisoner in a battle near Chattanooga. When she tried to escape, she was shot. That is when her gender was discovered by Confederates. Frances was confined in a prison camp at Atlanta, though she was given a separate room because of her gender. When Jefferson Davis heard about her, he wrote Frances a letter offering her a commission of lieutenant if she would enlist in Confederate army. She declined. In due time she was exchanged and before she left for Union lines the captors tried to get her to go home. She stated "Go home, my brother was killed at Pittsburgh Landing, and I have no home---no friends."

From: "Daughters of the Cause, Women of the Civil War" , by Robert P. Broadwater, Daisy Publications, 1998, pages 13-14.
 
That's a great, great story, Donna, thank you so much! Gosh. Now there's one, I'd love to get to wrk on, tracking down descendents. ( Please know that when that's the case, I have zero intention of violating anyone's privacy- just a ' feeler ' of a contact, see if it's intrusive and do they have an interest. Some may not, and may find it a little creepy, a stranger writing to them. ) . I thought the same thing, on that pair with the blond hair? They do look to me to be the boy/girl version of the same family- ( disclaimer- yes, I understand this is conjecture, we're just musing here, it's not harming the environment ) where the guy is ALL guy, isn't he? The other person just looks like him without nature's testosterone-induced jaw line and hefty neck. Someone will say ' Yes, YOUNGER brother ". OK- well, my sons each featured their hefty jaws by 15 and 16 ( the older ones ), and that GUY neck-for this couple, that'd be an awful lot of growing in a few year's time, no?
 
Interesting selection of photos. Pretty sure this is Paula Poundstone's g-g-grandmother:

Expired Image Removed

This thread is a bit old, but I just wanted to mention that I've seen this image posted in numerous places as a documented instance of a disguised female soldier. I haven't been able to get specifics as to her unit and such, but I'll post more details if I can find them. So much for, "not a single one of these soldiers are female."
 
Back
Top