Paying Respects to a Pair of Civil War Women Soldiers

Those who study the Civil War era are aware of the pivotal roles women across the continent played in the conflict. Women served as nurses, worked in factories, managed the home front, and communicated and comforted loved ones serving on the front lines. Unsurprisingly, many women took this a step further by disguising themselves as men and joining the military to actively fight. In the past year, I had the privilege to visit the graves of two of these women to pay my respects.

The first grave I visited was that of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, a woman ECW has previously featured. Last summer, I had the chance to co-lead a tour of Civil War New Orleans with Chris Mackowski for the American Battlefield Trust’s Summer Teacher Institute. As part of the tour, we visited the Chalmette Battlefield, site of Andrew Jackson’s famed War of 1812 victory. The site is also related to the Civil War, as there was a brief skirmish at the same location where a handful of Confederates fired on David Farragut’s ships for about 20 minutes before the warships continued upriver to New Orleans. It is also adjacent to the Chalmette National Cemetery.

As the tour bus stopped at the battlefield, I got on the microphone and told the teachers they were free to explore the locations, but that I was on a mission to find the grave of the only Civil War woman soldier resting in the cemetery. Several educators tagged along to hear the story of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman and see if we could find her grave.

Sarah Rosetta Wakeman disguised herself as a man before enlisting, doing so to work as a stevedore. When that worked, she enlisted to receive better pay (and a bounty), spending time guarding Washington DC before her regiment was transferred to Louisiana. She wrote many letters home, sometimes signing with her actual name and sometimes signing with her pseudonym Lyons. Her unit participated in the 1864 Red River campaign, where Wakeman saw combat. After that, she became sick and ultimately passed away in New Orleans.

A little bit of research brought me Sarah Wakeman’s grave number, and with that she became relatively easy to find. The group of teachers made it to her grave and we collectively paid our respects. Interestingly her grave marker lists Sarah as Lyons Wakeman, and anyone who did not know it beforehand would never recognize her as a woman soldier by simply visiting her grave. The group of teachers were so engaged that we spent an hour there, learning about Wakeman’s story, as well as stories behind the thousands of USCT soldiers buried there as well. Afterwards, we reboarded the bus and continued our tour, with everyone happy we were able to pay our respects.

Fast forward a few months to the Fall 2024 semester. In my Early US History class, my students wrote a handful of essays for the class. For that semester, I gave my students a collection of choices to pick topics related to the Civil War era. These included writing about Confederate secession declarations, Robert Gould Shaw’s letters, Ulysses Grant’s Enforcement Acts, Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, or Sarah Wakeman’s letters home. Many students chose Wakeman’s letters, writing an essay about her journey and unpacking her motivations for joining the military.

Some students took the Wakeman choice further, comparing her story to those of other women in that also disguised themselves and fought in the war. One of the best was a paper comparing Wakeman’s journey with that of Sarah Emma Edmonds.

Edmonds’s story is a bit different because she wrote her own memoir of her experiences.[1] Unlike Wakeman, Edmonds also served as a spy and eventually a nurse, doing this after getting injured and leaving the army so her identity was not discovered. After the war, she fought for an honorable discharge for Frank Thompson, her pseudonym who was listed as a deserter. She even became one of the two women who became members of the Grand Army of the Republic.

In January, 2025, just after the snowstorm that blanketed the Gulf coast, I sat in my office trying to catch up on missed paperwork when a student rushed in. He was the student who compared Wakeman’s story with that or Edmonds. So motivated by the paper he wrote, the student continued researching both women. I asked how it was going and he blurted out excitedly that Sarah Emma Edmonds was buried in Houston, just a few miles from campus.

At first I did not believe him. She served in a Michigan regiment and I had never heard before that she lived in Houston. Wanting to check this information, I did some in internet searches and quickly found out that she indeed lived in Houston postwar. Her membership in the Grand Army of the Republic was with the George B. McClellan Post No. 9 in Houston! A little more research and I found out she remains buried at Glenwood Cemetery, near downtown Houston.

That weekend my wife and I made the trip to see if we could find Edmonds’s resting place. I knew the general area where she was buried at, so we went to the cemetery to see what we could find. Glenwood Cemetery is home to many famed people, including Howard Hughes and numerous Confederate leaders from Texas. We found the cemetery and made our way to the back. While looking at all the markers, my eye caught a location with handful of plain markers like those used in national cemeteries. I knew this had to be the spot.

Indeed it was. I found Sarah Edmonds’s resting place, surrounded by nine fellow US Civil War veterans. My wife and I spent some time cleaning off branches and dirt from the grave markers, and paying our respects. Edmonds’s grave marker listed her name accurately as Emma E. Seeley (her married name) and designated her as an army nurse. Next to her marker is a small sign noting her as a G.A.R. Veteran. That night, I emailed my student that I found her grave, and when Monday came, he rushed to my office to talk to me about everything.

Thus, in the span of about six months, I had the privilege of paying my respects to two women who went far beyond expectations and actively fought in the Civil War. The journey was not my own however, as both were tied to education, with both teachers and students wanting to learn more about why women would want to disguise themselves and put their lives on the line.

Endnotes:

[1] Sarah Emma Edmonds, The Female Spy in the Union Army (Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske, and Company, 1864). The book was later reprinted under the title Nurse and Spy in the Union Army.