Women and Children | Crossroads of War

Women and Children

November 1, 2011 By admin

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Residents of Sharpsburg fleeing the town as Confederates approach and prepare for battle in September 1862 (Harpers Weekly, October 11, 1862; NPS History Collection)

A shell bursting in the cellar window of the John Kretzer house in Sharpsburg, where townspeople had retreated for safety (F.H. Schell, artist; Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, October 25, 1862; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

Chambersburg citizens leaving in advance of the Confederate forces (J. C. Aulet, artist; New York Illustrated Newspaper, July 11, 1863; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

Daniel Ridgeway Knights painting The Burning of Chambersburg (1867), showing townspeople taking shelter as Chambersburg is torched in 1864 (Washington County Museum of Fine Arts)

Jennie Wade, the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg (National Park Service)

General McClellan and the National Troops Passing through Frederick City in Pursuit of the Rebel Army Their Enthusiastic Reception by the Inhabitants, September 12, (Edwin Forbes, artist; Frank Leslies Illustrated News, October 4, 1862; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

How the Daughters of Maryland Received the Sons of the North as They Marched Against the Rebel Invaders, a scene in Frederick (F.H. Schell, artist; Frank Leslies Illustrated News, November 1, 1862; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

Pro-Union women from Martinsburg, Virginia, replacing planks on a bridge to allow Union forces to advance (Harpers New Monthly Magazine, April 1868: 570)

The ladies shown in this photograph - Elizabeth White standing in the center, Annie Hempstone to her left, and Kate and Betsie Ball (probable) were residents of Loudoun County, VA, and smugglers of military supplies from Maryland back across the Potomac River. (Thomas Balch Library Visual Collections)

Barbara Fritchie waving her flag in front of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson (Courtesy of Chris Haugh)

Barbara Fritchie (also spelled Frietchie) and the first stanza of the poem that made her famous (Library of Congress)

Barbara Fritchie, the flag-waver from Frederick (Courtesy of Chris Haugh; from L.P. Brockett and Mary C. Vaughan, Womans Work in the Civil War, A Record of Heroism, Patriotism and Patience, 1867)

Cover of sheet music for Barbra Frietchie, words by J.G Whittier, music by Elizabeth Sloman, 1874 (Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University

Ladies patriotic Civil War apron, worn by Mary Himes Fox of New Bethlehem, PA (Gettysburg National Military Park)

This September 1861 cover from Harpers Weekly is titled A Female Rebel in Baltimore, and shows a woman wearing clothing displaying the Confederate colors (Courtesy of Princeton University Library)

The maker of this Union flag quilt is not known, but the quilt is believed to have come from Washington County. Created in 1861, during the first year of the Civil War, it is adorned with thirty-four stars. (Image from Gloria Seaman Allen and Nancy Gibson Tuckhorn, A Maryland Album Quiltmaking Traditions, 1634-1934 [1995])

In the spring of 1864, a Baltimore merchant secretly sent a shipment of supplies to the Confederacy, including this uniform coat. The coat was a gift to Robert E. Lee from the women Southern sympathizers of Frederick and Carroll Counties in Maryland. (Courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society)

Twenty-year-old Margaret E. Buckey, of Frederick County, made this quilt in 1857, expressing her patriotic feelings. The Liberty Pole between the two flags may also have expressed anti-slavery feelings, as Buckey was a member of the anti-slavery Brethren Church and also lived near anti-slavery Quakers. See Gloria Seaman Allen and Nancy Gibson Tuckhorn, A Maryland Album, Quiltmaking Traditions, 1634-1934 (1995), 153-55. (Historical Society of Carroll County; courtesy of the MD Assoc. for Family and Community Education)

Josephine Miller, a young woman during the Battle of Gettysburg, stayed in her home in the midst of battle and baked bread all day to give to hungry soldiers. When the 1st Massachusetts dedicated their monument at Gettysburg, Miller and her stove were the guests of honor. (U.S. Army Military History Institute)

Detail of the previous image

Frances Clayton disguised as Jack Williams, a Union soldier in the Missouri Artillery; Clayton fought alongside her husband in several battles until her true identity was discovered when a bullet struck her hip and she was sent to the hospital. (Library of Congress)

Sarah Emma Edmonds, a Canadian native and Union spy, disguised as Franklin Thompson, one of her many alter-egos used to infiltrate Confederate camps. (National Archives)

A produce market on the banks of the Shenandoah River in Harpers Ferry (J. B. Taylor, artist; Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, October 8, 1864; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

The camp of the 5th New York Heavy Infantry at Camp Hill, Harpers Ferry included women, seen at the bottom of the picture, laundering clothes (Harpers Ferry National Historic Park)

A detailed view of the previous image, focusing on the women working at the regiments camp (Harpers Ferry National Historic Park)

Ellen McClellan, wife of General George McClellan, U.S. Army officers, and members of the Lee family pose on the porch of the Lee home south of Burkittsville in Frederick County. Ellen McClellan, shown second from right, stayed in the Lee home after the Battle of Antietam. (Oct. 1862, Alexander Gardner, photographer; Library of Congress)

At the railroad station in Charlestown, VA, a local woman refuses to acknowledge two nearby Union officers; the author of the accompanying article writes that he will never forget how she turned up her nose. I doubt if she will ever get it down again. (Frank Leslies Illustrated News, November 15, 1862; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

African Americans who escaped from slavery (sometimes called contraband) and found refuge in the Williamsport, Maryland, camp of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment (U.S. Army Military History Institute)

Despite orders to the contrary in 1862, many Union soldiers literally looked the other way to allow fugitive slaves into their camps (George W. Wingate, History of the Twenty-Second Regiment of the National Guard of the State of New York: From its Organization to 1895 [New York: Edwin W. Dayton, 1896], 100)

Contraband coming into the Union lines, such as these in Harpers Ferry c.August 1862, were sometimes employed by soldiers as servants (George W. Wingate, History of the Twenty-Second Regiment of the National Guard of the State of New York: From its Organization to 1895 [New York: Edwin W. Dayton, 1896], 85)

This image accompanies a story about slaveowners in the Leesburg vicinity taking enslaved African Americans further south to avoid losing them because of the Emancipation Proclamation (Harpers Weekly, November 8, 1862; Courtesy of David Nathanson)

Nancy Campbell (later changed to Camel) was enslaved for forty-two years in Washington County before she was finally manumitted in 1859 (Courtesy of Edie Wallace)

Nannie Tyler Page of Frederick with her baby and the enslaved Laura Frazier, who took care of Pages children (Historical Society of Frederick County) [photograph has been enhanced]

Henry Ossawa Tanner, the son of Rev. Benjamin Tucker Tanner, the minister of Quinn Chapel AME Church in Frederick, later wrote about seeing Confederates in Frederick before the Battle of Monocacy (Marcia M. Matthews, Henry Ossawa Tanner: American Artist, 1995)

Frank, Frederick, and Alice Humiston, the children of Union solider Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Infantry. When he was killed on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Amos was found holding this photograph. Unable to identify his body, this photo was circulated and his story became a sensation in the north. (Gettysburg National Military Park)

A photograph of the D.R. Miller farmhouse on the Antietam Battlefield, probably taken in September or October of 1862; this detail shows what are thought to be members of the Miller family, including four children. These four children had just witnessed the single bloodiest day in American history. (Library of Congress)

Mrs. Tynan and her two sons in Frederick, Maryland, c.1862 (Library of Congress)

Clara Barton, the Angel of the Battlefield, who risked her life to bring aid and comfort to wounded soldiers on the battlefield (National Park Service)

A Sister of Charity stands by the bedside of a dying soldier and ministers to the man in his final hours (Harpers Weekly, September 6, 1862; NPS History Collection)

Ladies of Frederick visiting the wounded in the Presbyterian Church hospital in Frederick (Charles F. Johnson, The Long Roll, 1911)

Several women, in the background, were part of this field hospital in Gettysburg (National Park Service)

U.S. Sanitary Commission members at Gettysburg (Gettysburg National Military Park)

Women and children from Hagerstown, Maryland bring baskets of supplies to aid the wounded soldiers in the town (Harpers Weekly, October 11, 1862; NPS History Collection)

Civilians, including women and children, visiting the Antietam battlefield two days after the battle view the gruesome spectacle of mangled bodies that have yet to be buried (F. H. Schell, artist; Frank Leslies Illustrated News, October 18, 1862; courtesy of Princeton University Library)

Mary Shellman, of Westminster, donated her burial lot so that five Union veterans would have a place of burial (Historical Society of Carroll County)

Children in Westminster line up for a Memorial Day Parade c.1900 (Historical Society of Carroll County)

This project has been generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Park Service, the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, Frederick Community College, and others. See Credits page for full list.

Catoctin Center for Regional Studies
Frederick Community College

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