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You don’t hear a lot about the contributions of women during the Civil War but I came across an interesting story last week while I was researching the Battle of Shiloh. Belle and William Reynolds had been married exactly one year when word of Fort Sumter reached them in their hometown of Peoria, Illinois. William immediately enlisted and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 17th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Rather than be separated from her new husband, Belle (along with several other women) followed his unit keeping a journal about her experiences.

Throughout the summer and then through the fall and winter of 1861, William’s regiment was involved in various campaigns in southern Missouri. By April, 1862 they had moved into Tennessee and were camped by the Tennessee River at Pittsburg Landing just across the river from the town of Savannah. At dawn on Sunday, April 6, 1862 Belle was cooking her husband’s breakfast on the campfire when the Confederates launched their surprise attack on the Union forces. Now this is the part I love…in the midst of bullets flying and shells shrieking, Belle calmly finishes frying her cakes and as her husband mounts his horse to leave for battle, wraps them up and puts them in his haversack before running for her life! Talk about being cool under fire!

For the remainder of that day Belle and the other women assist as the wounded soldiers begin to pour in. Many were taken behind the lines to the Union steamboats on the river. The next day as they visited one of the boats, a surgeon objected to having women on board. Not intimidated in the least, Belle proceeds to search the boat for any members of her husband’s regiment. In her diary she notes that “though there were three or four hundred wounded men on the boat, there were but two or three surgeons, and they unwilling to have us relieve what suffering we could.” The surgeons also refused to give the women any supplies so undaunted, Belle gathers some from other boats and returns to clean wounds and serve food. Go Belle!

A week later Belle is ordered home to Illinois for some much needed rest. The other travelers on her boat were very interested in hearing her eyewitness account of the recent battle. One of the passengers happend to be Illinois govenor Richard Yates who, being moved by Belle’s story proposed to give her a commission in the army and upon learning her husband’s rank of lieutenant, made her a Major stating that he believed in “giving the women the best of it.”

Ladies, now THAT’S a role model!

Source: WOMEN OF THE WAR; THEIR HEROISM AND SELF-SACRIFICE. S. S. SCRANTON & CO, 1866.

Nancy Shively

Nancy Shively is a passionate family historian, the mother of 4 grown children, and the grandmother of 3 grandsons to whom she hopes to hand down her family stories.

You can find Nancy on Twitter at @nancyshively as well as on Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, and her own Gathering Stories blog.

What I write is the result of large experience, much thought, and close attention to the subject. It may seem trite— even needless— to those who have carefully studied it as I have; but there are, I presume to think, many to whom these “HINTS” cannot be but useful. Those who have practised little, or not considered much, will, I believe, thank me for them and profit by them.

The art of horsemanship does not consist merely in knowing how to mount, how to hold the reins, how to sit with security and grace, nor how to compel the horse to walk that canters or gallops at the will of the rider. All these are indispensable. But there is also to be acquired the art of drawing forth the willing obedience of the animal. This is to he obtained only by a kind, temperate, and uniform treatment, and by a thorough knowledge of his habits and instincts.

How different is a ride on a well-kept, well-used horse, who feels that he carries a friend, from one on a broken-spirited or timid creature, in whom ill-usage has produced many defects! In the former case, the exercise is as great a pleasure to the horse as to his rider. He sniffs the air, he pricks up his ears, he throws forward his feet with energy. Life has to him delights beyond his stall and his corn. The horse is naturally gentle, intelligent, and affectionate; but these qualities are not sufficiently studied or appreciated. He is usually regarded merely as a means of health and pleasure to his owner, and not often is either gratitude, kindness, or sympathy extended to him in return.

Occasionally horses are found vicious and unmanageable; but defects of temper may generally be traced to the ill-treatment of some reckless master, some cruel trainer, or some ignorant groom. Even in these cases, mild, but firm treatment, may render him gentle and tractable.

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A College student, not a professor of religion, was accustomed to kneel down and pray before retiring to bed. His roommate, who was prayerless and profane, speaking of it, said:

“It’s on account of a promise he has made to his mother, I suppose.”

Of his roommate’s praying he spoke thus sneeringly, but his conjecture was probably correct.

Happy are those sons whose mothers teach them to pray, and whose influence over them on account of a pious example, is so powerful that they are constrained to do as they have been taught.

The young man who was not ashamed to pray, even in the presence of his irreligious roommate, has been for years a member of the Presbyterian Church, was joined in marriage to a pious lady, and fills with honor a high station connected with one of our State governments.

The other, who made light of a mother’s holy teachings, was a young man of talent, and a good scholar, but after leaving college he failed to occupy a prominent position among men. He died a few years ago, probably as he had lived, a scoffer.

To a pious mother’s influence many of our best men trace their elevation in the world.

 via The S.S. Times

Source

Collection: African American Newspapers
Publication: The Christian Recorder
Date: April 18, 1868
Title: A Mother’s Influence
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Anne Newport Royall is considered “The first American newspaper woman” but she didn’t begin her newspaper career until she was 62. From the age of 51 to 62 she was a travel correspondent before settling down as the editor and publisher of the newspaper Paul Pry (later renamed as The Huntress).

In her years as a reporter and editor she had a very confrontational style. She continuously campaigned government corruption in Washington. In an expose she unmasked a nepotistic clerk in the House of Representatives who was padding the office payroll. Anne Royall’s interview of John Quincy Adams made her first time female reporter to interview a US president.

The story of Anne’s life is told, in detail, in A Centennial History of Alleghany County Virginia by Oren F. Morton in our American County Histories to 1900 collection.

Anne Newport Royall

Anne Newport was born near Baltimore in 1769. In 1772 her parents moved to the mouth of the Loyal Hanna in the west of Pennsylvania. There the family lived in a log cabin only eight feet broad and ten feet long. It contained a bed, a puncheon table, and four stools, but there was neither a trunk nor a box, nor was there a tablecloth in the hut. Anne never saw a metallic pin until she was a grown woman. On the frontier thorns were used as pins and mussel-shells as spoons. But in possessing knives, forks, and spoons, the Newports were better off than most of their neighbors.

From the door could be seen a tree in which was the nest of an eagle.

Mr. Newport died before Anne was grown, and the widow married a man named Butler. An Indian raid in 1782 made her a widow a second time, and three years later she was at Staunton, Virginia, near which town she seems to have had relatives.

To find relief from a skin ailment, Mrs. Butler went with her children to Sweet Springs. Major William Royall, a well educated but reclusive local luminary and a zealous patriot of the American Revolution, invited her to become his housekeeper, and she accepted. Anne seems to have interested the old planter at once. She had a bright, retentive mind.

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For over sixty years has Mrs. Stanton been engaged in unceasing efforts for the benefit of her sex. Among many changes which she has seen come to pass have been those of mothers appointed equal guardians of the children with their husbands; laws respecting the liability of employers to workingwomen; laws regulating child labor in factories in most of the States; women on the boards of directors in asylums, penitentiaries, and almshouses; women matrons in police stations; equal pay for equal work; women in the colleges, universities, and professions; the rights of business women protected: and she has also seen that marvelous growth of organization for women which has reached such a development in the United States that it is the wonder of the world. She has seen the Australasian lands, Queensland, Victoria, New Zealand, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, extend political equality to both sexes, and incidental to these great changes she has seen the many accompanying ones of lesser note due to the change in public opinion and the gradual education of the masses up to a more reasonable standard.

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