Civil War Army Nurse and Spy
Canadian Woman Served as a Man in Union Army
Sarah was born December 1841 on a farm near Magaguadavic, New Brunswick, Canada, the youngest of four girls. Her father Isaac Edmondson demanded that she and her sisters don boys’ clothes and do fieldwork. A teenage tomboy, Sarah didn’t mind wearing those clothes and could outshoot any boy her age, but it was her father’s abusive nature that drove her away. With her mother’s help she left home to avoid a marriage that her father arranged.
Concerned that her father might find her where she worked, she cut her hair and became Franklin (Frank) Thompson. She sold Bibles in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Flint, Michigan where she was living when the Civil War started.
Nurse and Spy in the Union Army
In May 1861 Emma enlisted with Company F, the Flint Union Greys, of the Second Michigan Volunteer Infantry as Private Franklin Thompson, male nurse. When her hospital unit was sent to Virginia to be part of McClellan’s campaign, she volunteered to be a spy for the Union Army. During each of her spying missions behind enemy lines she wore different disguises such as an Irish peddler, a rebel cavalryman, and a clerk. Her spying provided information about spies in the Union camps and the Confederate soldiers’ activities and plans.
In addition to duties as a nurse, which included burying the dead soldiers, she picked up a gun and participated in battles. While serving under General Grant in 1863 she became quite ill with malaria. Knowing that she could not be treated in the field hospital without having her deception discovered, she left the camp. She travelled by train to Cairo, Illinois where she checked into a hospital as a woman for the necessary treatment. Because Frank Thompson was publicly listed as a deserter she could not return to the army, and served as nurse Sarah Edmonds during the remaining years of the war.
While working as a nurse at Harper’s Ferry, she met Linus H. Seelye, an old acquaintance from New Brunswick who was working as a carpenter.
Civil War Ended in 1865
When the war ended in 1865, Sarah returned to New Brunswick to find that her parents were dead and that some of her siblings were running the farm. She visited with them for several months then travelled to Ohio where she met Linus again. They were married in Cleveland April 27, 1867. Parents of three children who died young, they adopted two sons and lived in Ohio and Kansas for some time before moving to Laporte, Texas in 1884.
Using the name Edmonds instead of the family name Edmondson, Emma wrote a successful book about her Civil War experiences titled, ‘Nurse and Spy in the Union Army’ that was partly fiction. The revelation that she was a deserter caused loss of her pension.
Troubled that she was branded a deserter, she petitioned the War Department for a review of her case. A congressional bill in 1884 recognized her service and renewed her pension of $12 a month and the desertion charge was removed from her record in 1886.
Buried with Military Honours
Emma died of malaria on September 5, 1898 in Laporte, Texas. She was buried with military honours in Washington Cemetery, Houston, Texas where her marker reads 'Emma E. Seelye, Army Nurse'. In 1992 she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame and the city of Flint, Michigan erected a plaque outside its courthouse commending Edmonds for her wartime activities.
“Estimates of women disguising themselves as men and enlisting range from 400 to 700 and records indicate that approximately 60 women soldiers were known to have been killed or wounded.” According to Larry G. Eggleston, author of Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders, and Others
Published by McFarland, 2003
Sarah Edmonds Civil War Spy
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