The 1800 and 1900s are filled with stories about women and girls who disguised their gender to do the things that only men were allowed to do. I found this little story about a fierce soldier girl whose identity was not fully found out until she returned home.
GIRL MADE GOOD SOLDIER
A story is told that while the Union army was at and near Chattanooga, Col. Burke, of the Tenth Ohio, exchanged a large number of prisoners with the rebels. The colonel noticed a particularly natty young soldier among those he received. The soldier gave the name “Frank Henderson” and said “he” belonged to the Nineteenth Illinois. It developed that this soldier was a young girl, and that she and her brother at the outset of the war had enlisted in the Eleventh Illinois.
The pair were orphans and were devoted to each other. She could not bear the thought of being separated from her brother who had been her only companion from babyhood. At the expiration of her enlistment for three months in this regiment she was mustered out, and next enlisted in the Third Illinois, where her sex was not discovered. In that regiment she made a most excellent record, but being wounded in one of the engagements, she was again discharged and sent home, only to re-enlist in the Nineteenth Illinois. She served in all the battles of Col. O’Mara’s regiment and finally was taken prisoner at Holly Springs.
The girl soldier was taken to Atlanta, Ga. There in attempting to escape she was shot in the leg, but even in her confinement to the prison hospital her sex was not discovered. After recovering from the wound inflicted by the prison guard she was sent to Graysville, where she was exchanged. She was sent to her Illinois house. [Source]
