This is a timeline of women in warfare in the United States before 1900.This list includes women who served in the
United States Armed Forces in various roles. It also includes women who have been
Warriors and fighters in other types of conflicts that have taken place in the United States. This list should also encompass women who served in support roles during military and other conflicts in the United States before the twentieth century.
November:
Margaret Corbin was wounded fighting next to her husband during the attack of
Fort Washington.[3][4] She eventually earned a military pension for her service.[3]
1777
April:
Sibyl Ludington rode to alert New York militia that the British were burning Danbury; these accounts, originating from the
Ludington family, are questioned by modern scholars.[5][6][7]
1778
Mary Hays aided Revolutionary soldiers in the
Battle of Monmouth, bringing water and later being known as "Molly Pitcher."[8]
Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man and fought under the name, Robert Shurtliff in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment.[3]
19th century
OjibwaChief Earth Woman accompanied men on the warpath after claiming to have gained powers from a dream.[10]
Gouyen, an Apache woman, assassinated a Comanche chief who killed her husband in battle. She later fought beside other Apaches in a battle against a party of miners.[11][12]
Pawnee woman
Old Lady Grieves The Enemy changed the course of a battle with the
Ponca and
Sioux by attacking the enemy, thus shaming the men into fighting when they were in retreat.[13]
Women were first officially assigned as keepers in the Lighthouse Service of the
U.S. Coast Guard beginning in the 1830s. Previously, many wives and daughters of keepers had served as keepers when their husbands or fathers became ill. Women continued as lighthouse keepers until 1947.[22]
The Warner Sisters came to Constitution Island. For a half century, Susan and Anna Warner wrote popular novels and taught Sunday School to West Point cadets. Susan wrote a Wide Wide World, one of the nation's best sellers, in the 1850s. Anna wrote the words to the children's verse "
Jesus Loves Me." They later donated the island to the
United States Military Academy in 1908. The remains of both sisters were interred in the West Point cemetery.[23]
1840s
1842
Kuilix, a female warrior of the
Pend d'Oreilles headed a group of warriors which rescued another group from the
Blackfeet. Women of both the Pend d'Oreilles and the related
Flathead tribe actively participated in warfare, entering battles and dancing in war dances.[citation needed]
1846
Mexican War (1846–1848):
Elizabeth Newcom enlisted under the name Bill Newcom in the Missouri Volunteer Infantry. She served briefly before being discovered and discharged.[19]
Sarah Borginnes was hailed as the "Heroine of Fort Brown" following her actions during the
Siege of Fort Texas. She went on to operate a series of inns providing food, lodging, liquor, and prostitutes to
Zachary Taylor's troops.[19]
From 1859 to 1862
Maria Andreu (a.k.a. Maria Mestre de los Dolores) served as the Keeper of the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida, becoming the first Hispanic-American woman to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard and the first Hispanic-American woman to oversee a federal shore installation.[22]
Civil War (1861–1865): Women were involved in civilian volunteer work where they aided troops on both sides of the war. Biologically female soldiers on both sides wore male clothing to serve; some of them, such as
Albert Cashier, were transgender men. By the end of the war, over 500 fully paid positions were available to women as nurses and in the
United States Military.[19]
1861
Dorothea Dix was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses for the
Union Army on June 10, 1861, and quickly created and implemented guidelines for nursing candidates.[27] In October 1863, after the U.S. the War Department introduced Order No. 351, which granted both the Surgeon General (
Joseph K. Barnes) and the Superintendent of Army Nurses (Dix) the power to appoint female nurses,[28] Dix managed a U.S. Army nursing program that was staffed by more than 3,000 women.[29]
Dr.
Mary Walker was a doctor who served with the Union Army in the
First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) on July 21, 1861, and three later major engagements. Commissioned as a captain, she was captured on April 10, 1864, becoming the first female
prisoner of war; she was released on August 12, 1864, in exchange for a Confederate major who was being held as a POW by the Union Army. At war's end, she received the
Medal of Honor for her service and for hardships endured as a POW.[30]
1861–1863:
Lizzie Compton disguised herself as a man and fought on the side of the Union.[31][32]
1861–1865:
Harriet Tubman, an
abolitionist who had previously been
enslaved,[33] served as a scout, nurse, and a spy for the Union Army. As the leader of a band of
scouts, she provided key intelligence to Union military leaders, and became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War in the
Raid at Combahee Ferry in 1863. In 1913, Tubman was buried in Ft. Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York and received full military honors at the service.[34]
1862
Susan King Taylor became the first African American to work as an army nurse in the United States.[35]
March 20:
Malinda Blalock disguised herself as a man and registered as "Samuel Blalock" in the Confederate military. She fought in three battles with her husband, who was her sergeant.[36][37]
Four nuns from Holy Cross and five African American women worked as nurses on the Navy's Red Rover.[18]
1863
Pauline Cushman, an actress, served on the Union side as a spy dressed in male uniform. She was given a volunteer reserve commission as a major and became known as Miss Major Cushman. By the end of the war in 1865 she was touring the country giving lectures on her exploits as a spy, and was presented by
P.T. Barnum in New York.[40][41]
Clara Barton, the "
Florence Nightingale of America",[43] was appointed by Union General
Benjamin Butler as the "lady in charge" of the hospitals for the
Army of the James in 1864. Already known as the "Angel of the Battlefield"[44] for rendering aid to an overwhelmed surgeon following the August 1862 Battle of Cedar Mountain in northern Virginia, as well as for her repeated assistance to troops in the battles of Fairfax Station, Chantilly, Harpers Ferry, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Petersburg and Cold Harbor,[45] she came under fire during an incident in which a bullet pierced the sleeve of her dress, traveled through it and killed the soldier she was nursing.[46]
Florena Budwin became the first American woman to be buried in a
national cemetery. Prior to her death, she had disguised herself as a man to join the Union Army.[48][49]
February 17: Confederate soldier
Mollie Bean was captured by Union forces while disguised as a man. When questioned, she said she had served for two years and had been wounded twice.[50][51]
March 2:
Maria Lewis, a formerly enslaved woman who enlisted with a Union Army regiment[52] under the alias George Harris, and who distinguished herself while serving in the Eighth New York Cavalry,[53] fought for the Union Army in the
Battle of Waynesboro, Virginia.[54]
1866
1866–1868:
Cathay Williams, a former Missouri slave, went on to become one of the only women
Buffalo Soldiers. Williams took the name, William Cathay, and was able to enlist in the Black infantry. She served from November 15, 1866, to October 14, 1868. When she applied for her Army pension in 1891, it was only then that her true identity was revealed.[34]
Spanish–American War: During an epidemic of
typhoid,
malaria, and
yellow fever, Dr.
Anita Newcomb McGee proposed that the
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) work as contract nurses to help soldiers suffering from the epidemic. Approximately 1,500 women ultimately became civilian contract nurses; roughly thirty-two were African American women, many of whom who were thought to be immune to many of the diseases in the epidemic. Of the twenty female contract nurses who later died due to their service, three were African American. Eighty additional African American women worked as professional contract nurses.[34] Dr. McGee was appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon General, becoming the first woman to hold that position. She was also tasked with creating legislation for a permanent corps of nurses in the Army.[19]
^Massey, Mary Elizabeth; Berlin, Jean V. (1994). Women in the Civil War (Bison Book ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
ISBN0-8032-8213-3.
^Larson, Kate Clifford (2004). Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, pp. 72–80. New York: Ballantine Books.
ISBN978-0-345-45627-4.
^Barton, William Eleazar (1922).
"The Forerunners of the Red Cross". The Life of Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross, Volume 2.
Houghton Mifflin. p. 115. Retrieved February 4, 2019 – via Google Books.