Timeline of women in war in the United States, pre-1945

Last updated

This is a timeline of women in warfare in the United States up until the end of World War II. It encompasses the colonial era and indigenous peoples, as well as the entire geographical modern United States, even though some of the areas mentioned were not incorporated into the United States during the time periods that they were mentioned.

Contents

See also: Timeline of women in warfare in the United States from 1900 to 1949 .

Timeline of women in war in the United States, Pre-1945

Hannah Duston Hannah Duston Killing the Indians, 1847.webp
Hannah Duston
Nancy Ward Nanyehi.jpg
Nancy Ward
Sybil Ludington Ludington statue 800.jpg
Sybil Ludington
Deborah Sampson DeborahSampson.jpg
Deborah Sampson
Pine Leaf Beckwourth pine leaf11.jpg
Pine Leaf
Kuilix Kuilix.gif
Kuilix
Hanging Cloud Hangingcloud.jpg
Hanging Cloud
Eliza Allen Eliza C Allen signed.jpg
Eliza Allen
Mary Edwards Walker Mary Edwards Walker.jpg
Mary Edwards Walker
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman by Squyer, NPG, c1885.jpg
Harriet Tubman
Malinda Blalock Ana2006-Sarah.jpg
Malinda Blalock
Pauline Cushman Pauline Cushman.jpg
Pauline Cushman
Cathay Williams Cathay Williams.gif
Cathay Williams
Calamity Jane Calamity jane.jpeg
Calamity Jane
Toby Riddle Winema.jpg
Toby Riddle
Dahteste Dahteste.jpg
Dahteste

Early Modern era

18th century

Revolutionary War

  • 1770s: Cuhtahlatah, a Cherokee woman, inspires the Cherokee to rally and win a battle by attacking the enemy. [4]
  • 1770s: Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, the mother of Andrew Jackson, treats and nurses sick and wounded Continental soldiers in American Revolutionary War on British prison ship, dying of cholera as a result. [5]
  • 1775: On Dec. 11, 1775, Jemima Warner was killed by an enemy bullet during the siege of Quebec. Mrs. Warner had originally accompanied her husband, PVT James Warner of Thompson's Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion, to Canada because she feared that he would become sick on the campaign trail and she wanted to nurse him. When PVT Warner eventually died in the wilderness en route to Quebec, Mrs. Warner buried him and stayed with the battalion as a cook. [6]
  • November 16, 1776: Margaret Corbin assists her husband in manning the cannons while fighting the British in battle in the American Revolutionary War. When her husband is killed, she mans the cannons alone. She later became the first woman to earn a military pension. [7]
  • 1776–1782: During the American Revolution, women served on the battlefield as nurses, water bearers, cooks, launderers and saboteurs. [8] [9]
  • April 26, 1777: Sybil Ludington is said to have warned colonists that the British were burning the city of Danbury, Connecticut during the American Revolution; these accounts, originating from the Ludington family, are questioned by modern scholars. [10] [11] [12]
  • 1778: Molly Pitcher (born Mary Ludwig in 1754) married John Hays in 1769. Her husband fought for the Continental Army at the Battle of Monmouth (New Jersey) on June 28, 1778. During the battle, she brought pitchers of water to her husband and fellow soldiers, thus earning the appellation Molly Pitcher. When her husband succumbed to exhaustion, she picked up his rifle and fought against the British. [13]
  • 1778–1781: Ann Bates serves as a spy for the British loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. [14]
  • 1781: A woman called "Miss Jenny" serves as a spy for the British during the American Revolutionary War. [15]
  • 1781: Kate Barry warns the American militia that the British were approaching before the Battle of Cowpens. Her warning gives the colonists enough time to prepare and win the battle. [16]
  • 1782–1783: Deborah Sampson serves in the American army during the American Revolutionary War while disguised as a man. She is the first known American woman to join the military, the first to fight in combat, and the first to receive a military pension. [17] [18]

Post–Revolutionary War

19th century

1840s

1850s

Civil War era

Historian Elizabeth D. Leonard writes that, according to various estimates, between 500 and 1,000 women enlisted as soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, disguised as men. [35] :165,310–311 Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel. [35] :19,240 Women provided casualty care and nursing to Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals and on the Union Hospital Ship USS Red Rover. Female assigned at birth soldiers on both sides wear male clothing in order to serve; some of them, such as Albert Cashier, may have been 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. [25]

Post–Civil War to 1900s

1900–1917

World War I

See American women in World War I

1920s

World War II

See also


References

  1. Brooklyn Museum article Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art – The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Awashonks Last updated March 21, 2007.
  2. Grenier, John (2005). The First Way of War. University of Cambridge Press. pp. 40–41.
  3. McClary, Ben H. (1962). "Nancy Ward: The Last Beloved Woman of the Cherokees". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 21: 352–64.
  4. "110. Incidents Of Personal Heroism". Internet Sacred Text Archive. Retrieved 2013-04-19.
  5. Patterson, Benton Rain (2005). The Generals: Andrew Jackson, Sir Edward Pakenham, and the Road to the Battle of New Orleans. NY: New York University Press. p. 12. ISBN   978-0814767177.
  6. 1 2 "Women In Military Service For America Memorial". Archived from the original on April 3, 2013.
  7. Education & Resources – National Women's History Museum – NWHM
  8. "Women In Military Service For America Memorial". Archived from the original on April 3, 2013.
  9. Carney, Virginia Moore (2005). Eastern Band Cherokee Women. The University of Tennessee Press. pp.  30. ISBN   1572333324.
  10. Hunt, Paula D. (June 2015). "Sybil Ludington, the Female Paul Revere: The Making of a Revolutionary War Heroine". The New England Quarterly . 88 (2): 187–222. doi: 10.1162/TNEQ_a_00452 . ISSN   0028-4866. S2CID   57569643.
  11. Tucker, Abigail (March 2022). "Did the Midnight Ride of Sibyl Ludington Ever Happen?". Smithsonian . Retrieved July 6, 2022.
  12. Eschner, Sybil (April 26, 2017). "Was There Really a Teenage, Female Paul Revere?". Smithsonian . Retrieved July 6, 2022.
  13. Keenan, Shelia (1996). Scholastic Encyclopedia of Women In The U.S. Scholastic.
  14. "Spy Letters of the American Revolution". University of Michigan. Archived from the original on November 17, 2001. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  15. Frank, Lisa Tendrich (January 17, 2013). "An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields [2 volumes]". ABC-CLIO via Google Books.
  16. Ingle, Shelia (2006). Courageous Kate: A Daughter of the American Revolution. Hub City Press. ISBN   1891885529.
  17. "Education & Resources – National Women's History Museum – NWHM". www.nwhm.org. Retrieved 2017-03-02.
  18. Deborah Sampson Gannett, file # S-32732, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files (National Archives Microfilm Publication M804, roll 1045), Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
  19. Hackel, Steven W. (2003-01-01). "Sources of Rebellion: Indian Testimony and the Mission San Gabriel Uprising of 1785". Ethnohistory. 50 (4): 643–669. doi:10.1215/00141801-50-4-643. ISSN   0014-1801. S2CID   161256567.
  20. Niethammer, Carolyn (1995). Daughters of the Earth. Simon & Schuster. ISBN   068482955X.
  21. "Stockel, H. Henrietta. 1993. Women of the Apache Nation: Voices of Truth".
  22. Robinson, Sherry. 2000. Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
  23. Annals of Wyoming, Volume 59, p. 50 1987
  24. 1 2 3 4 5 "Historical Timeline". Archived from the original on 9 October 2012. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  25. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Highlights in the History of Military Women". Women In Military Service For America Memorial. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved June 22, 2013.
  26. Ellis, William (1827). Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii (2 ed.). London: H. Fisher, son, and P. Jackson.
  27. 1 2 3 "Women's History Chronology".
  28. Public Affairs – Home
  29. Roscoe, Will (1988). "Strange Country, This: Images of Berdaches and Warrior Women". In Roscoe, Will (ed.). Living the Spirit. MacMillan. p. 68. ISBN   031230224X . Retrieved January 12, 2014.
  30. Jenkins, Jennifer L. (2001). "Woman Chief". In Bataille, Gretchen M.; Lisa, Laurie (eds.). Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. pp. 341–342. ISBN   1135955875 . Retrieved January 12, 2014.
  31. Kershner, Jim. "Chief Kamiakin (ca. 1800–1877)". History Link. Retrieved 18 October 2020.
  32. Ackerman, Lillian A. (2003). A necessary balance : gender and power among Indians of the Columbia Plateau. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 21. ISBN   0806134852 . Retrieved 18 October 2020.
  33. Nelson, Kurt R. (2011). Treaties and Treachery: The Northwest Indians' Resistance to Conquest. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 240. ISBN   978-0870045004 . Retrieved 18 October 2020.
  34. Schlicke, Carl P. (1988). General George Wright, Guardian of the Pacific Coast. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 171–172. ISBN   0806121491.
  35. 1 2 3 4 Leonard, Elizabeth D. (1999). All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies . W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN   0393047121.
  36. 1 2 3 "Women In Military Service For America Memorial". Archived from the original on April 1, 2012.
  37. Claiming Their Citizenship: African American Women From 1624-2009 Archived 2012-02-27 at the Wayback Machine
  38. Blanton, DeAnne; Cook, Lauren M. (2002). They Fought like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War . Louisiana State University Press. ISBN   0807128066.
  39. "Toby Riddle (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-02-23.
  40. Hirschfelder, Arlene; Molin, Paulette F. (2012). The Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 148. ISBN   978-0810877108.
  41. O'Lynn, Chad E.; Tranbarger, Russell E., eds. (2006). Men in Nursing: History, Challenges, and Opportunities. New York: Springer Publishing. p. 88. ISBN   978-0826103499 . Retrieved June 22, 2013.
  42. D'Amico, Francine; Weinstein, Laurie Lee, eds. (1999). Gender Camouflage: Women and the U.S. Military. New York: NYU Press. p. 23. ISBN   978-0814719077 . Retrieved June 22, 2013.