Sarah Emma Edmonds Book Report

This report is about Sarah Emma Edmonds December 1841-september5, 1898. She was brave, and respected. She is 1 of the 400 women who fought in the Civil War. She is an inspiration to me because I want to be brave, I don’t want to be selfish, and I want to do things for the right reason.

Sarah was born in New Brunswick some time in December 1841 to Isaac Edmonds from Scotland and Elizabeth Leeper of Ireland. She was raised in Magaguadavic. She was the youngest of six four sisters and one brother. Her brother was a epileptic so he wasn’t useful to her father. He was angry with him so when Sarah was born and he knew it was the last child. He became violent in his anger and often beat Sarah and her siblings. This is way Sarah always acted like

a man. Doing the most dangerous thing on the farm.
One day a peddler came by the house very late in the evening Elizabeth had a kind hart let him stay overnight in the morning as a present the peddler gave Sarah a book Fanny Campbell the Female Pirate Captain This was a treat because of her father she never got a book he would always read it than through it away.

Sarah and three of her sisters would work in the field while one read then when Isaac came they would hide it. The book was about how Fanny became a man to save her husband she became a pirate captain and saved her husband. This is what gave Sarah her inspiration to become a man.

Her father was to give her in marriage to an old widow neighbor in panic she asked a friend to help Sarah escape. Her name was Betsy and her friend Annie Moffit they lived in Salisbury. After than she move to Flint Michigan disked as a boy. She kept her disguise when she got there. She became a book sails men under the name Franklin Tomson also known as frank.

She was at the train station one day when she heard from a newspaper boy that President Lincoln call for 7500 men volunteers. She wanted to fight so she signed up the first time she was to short But she tried again 3 months latter and stuffed straw in her shoes. She just barely made it but she was in the army. The 2 Michigan of the Potomac to be precise and was a soldier and

nurse.
Her tent mate was Damon Stwart a 26 year old from Flint Michigan the same plase she is living and was an old shoe keeper. He took him under his wing like she was his own son.
The first death Sarah witnessed was at the battel of bull run her was a gunner the shell hit the blockade killing one and wounding 3 and a horse
Sarah got a new friend his name was Jerome Robinson he was such a good friend to her that she fell in love with him. She told him that she was a girl. He got mad and threatened to tell on her, but he didn’t which was against the law, but you can imagine he kept his distant after that.
She was offered a mail job along with the hospital nursing job. She accepts it and is in the saddle a lot and was away from Jerome who she was still in love with.
Shortly after she became a mail carrier she was offered a spy job. She said yes was on her first mission as a slave named Cuff. She worked at making a blockade and got information at the same time. She also was a launder woman, and an Irish peddler women, and a soldier for confederate called Charles Mayberry She learned a lot from these adventures. She found an important letter in a general’s uniform. Then she carried a dead man’s message to a general and got information that way. She even shot a general in the face after she got the message and ran.
When she got malaria from the army she left from fear that she would be discovered by the hospital and would be killed so she ran and made herself a women again then checked in the hospital. By the time she was better she was already branded as a deserter. She could/t go back.
She went back to life as a women and wrought over 17500 copies of her book in the life in the army.
She went back home to Magaguadavic. Now that she was grown her father couldn’t hurt her she only found out that her mother and father was dead. Family say that after her mother died that her father sat in a rocker and stared down the road waiting for his long lost daughter to return. Her brother now live on the farm
She married Linus Seelye April27, 1867 they had a little bay April14, 1869 a boy named Linus. He died the same day they had one more boy named Homer who died to. They finally had Alice Louise Seelye who lived she was born in Aguste. The same month they adopted two boys Charles and Fredd
In 1880 they all got the measles Alice died on Christmas morning, but the boy recovered it was a sad time for ever one
Sarah was trying to get congress to grant her as a non-deserter in July5, 1884 they agreed to pay her $12.00 a month. She was the only women ever to be in the Grand Army of the Republic. It is very hard to get into even for men, but she did it and she had a lot of pride in it to.
She had a stroke and died September5, 1898 age 56 she was buried in La Porte, but the G.A.R comrades made them move her to Houston’s Washington Cemetery with a very nice military funeral on Memorial Day in 1901 her husband died 1917 age 85. Jerome out lived them both he died in 1921 age 80 in his personal things are all of Sarah’s letters.