Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: This is our show from our recent live appearance in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Sort of. We did record that show, but as we
Speaker 1: always warned might be the case, Yes, some minor technical
Speaker 1: difficulties with that recording. Yeah, we had some technical difficulties.
Speaker 1: We were there as part of an event called Great
Speaker 1: Conversations at Gettysburg. This was a whole full day of
Speaker 1: programming that was sponsored by the Gettysburg Foundation. We had
Speaker 1: a great time, but recording an outdoor event is always
Speaker 1: kind of a challenge. This time we had a rain
Speaker 1: delay followed by very breezy weather and just surprising number
Speaker 1: of motorcycle interruptions. Yeah, and as we were outdoors, so
Speaker 1: all of those things can fired to make kind of
Speaker 1: a slushy sound quality. Yea, So we are going to
Speaker 1: have a studio version of this show rather than the
Speaker 1: live recording. Also, we didn't call it this because folks
Speaker 1: just walking through Gettysburg wouldn't necessarily know what six impossible
Speaker 1: episodes means. But This is basically a six impossible episodes
Speaker 1: edition of the show. It's just focused on Gettysburg's ladies. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: for this live podcast, we wanted to focus on women
Speaker 1: in the Battle of Gettysburg, and there are just so
Speaker 1: many to choose from. Some of the people we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about we're local to Gettysburg, some were
Speaker 1: connected to the armies in some way, and some arrived
Speaker 1: after the battle was actually over. We just picked a
Speaker 1: few favorites. If we don't have your favorite, it's not
Speaker 1: because that person was not any good, just that, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a select few to twos for this time. Also,
Speaker 1: this is not remotely all the women who were there,
Speaker 1: and we're going to be focused mostly on the women's
Speaker 1: connections to Getty's Berg into the battle itself. So this
Speaker 1: is not going to be a full biography of all
Speaker 1: the women that we're going to talk about, but we
Speaker 1: will jump in and first we will talk about Marie Tepe,
Speaker 1: known as Fearless French Mary, who became quite a recognizable
Speaker 1: character during the Civil War. She was born Marie brus
Speaker 1: probably in Brest, France, and she eventually immigrated to the
Speaker 1: United States and once she got here, she married Bernard Tepe,
Speaker 1: who was a tailor in Philadelphia. In June of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, Bernard joined the twenty seven Pennsylvania Infantry, and
Speaker 1: he really wanted Marie to stay behind and mind their
Speaker 1: tailor shop. She wanted to go with him, though, so
Speaker 1: she became a vivandiere, which is a French term for
Speaker 1: uniformed women who traveled with the armies to kind of
Speaker 1: bolster the troops morale. A lot of times they acted
Speaker 1: as merchants and sold things like food and tobacco. Americans
Speaker 1: learned about vivandiere during the Crimean War, and during the
Speaker 1: Civil War there were women in this role on both
Speaker 1: sides of the fighting. Marie bought things like whiskey, food, tobacco,
Speaker 1: and various necessities to then sell to the soldiers. She
Speaker 1: carried her whiskey in a small keg, and she filled
Speaker 1: that keg with water when she couldn't get whiskey and
Speaker 1: sold water instead. And she fought when she had to,
Speaker 1: and she also helped care for the wounded. She was
Speaker 1: paid a soldiers salary, plus an extra five cents a
Speaker 1: day if she was doing hospital work. At some point,
Speaker 1: Marie left the seven Pennsylvania Inventory and Bernard Tepe. The story,
Speaker 1: as reported by other people, was that several soldiers, one
Speaker 1: of them being her husband, broke into her tent and
Speaker 1: stole six dollars from her. It is always tricky to
Speaker 1: try to convert currency from that long ago to today's dollars,
Speaker 1: but that was a huge amount of money. It would
Speaker 1: be a huge amount of money today if someone stole
Speaker 1: that from me, so at that time that was a fortune. Well,
Speaker 1: and even if like her husband had just broken in
Speaker 1: and stolen at twenty like, that's still not cool. Theft
Speaker 1: is theft, but it really was quite a large um.
Speaker 1: But she did not stay gone from the picture for long.
Speaker 1: Irish immigrant Charles H. T. Collis had previously served in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, and after his enlistment was over,
Speaker 1: he decided to start his own volunteer unit, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to style this unit after the French light infantry
Speaker 1: troops known as the Zuave, patterning the uniforms after their
Speaker 1: colorful pants, jackets, and turbans. At first, he had a
Speaker 1: small group known as the Zouave d'a rik or Collis's Zuav.
Speaker 1: They eventually became the fourteenth Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. As had
Speaker 1: been the case with the Vivandiere, Americans first experience to
Speaker 1: the Zuave was during the Crimean War, and then there
Speaker 1: was Quave style units on both sides of the Civil War.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, although the earliest French Zuave troops
Speaker 1: were from Northern Africa, eventually these units associated with the
Speaker 1: French army were made up of Europeans, and the zuab
Speaker 1: units in the Civil War, even though they might have
Speaker 1: some nod the idea of Africa, they were made up
Speaker 1: of white troops. Collis wanted his unit to have a Zizandiere.
Speaker 1: Either he recruited Marie or she simply heard about what
Speaker 1: he was doing and volunteered to join. She once again
Speaker 1: sold provisions, cooked and cared for the wounded. She also
Speaker 1: delivered water and supplies to the front lines, and doing
Speaker 1: that she actually took a bullet in the ankle at Fredericksburg.
Speaker 1: She was recovered enough to carry water to the troops
Speaker 1: at Chancellorsville, and there she was under so much heavy
Speaker 1: fire that people described her skirts as being riddled with
Speaker 1: bullet holes. She was awarded the Kearney Cross for valor
Speaker 1: on May sixteenth of eighteen sixty three, but she refused
Speaker 1: to wear it. She said she did not want a present.
Speaker 1: By the Battle of Gettysburg, Marie was a recognizable figure
Speaker 1: for much of the Union army in the area. She
Speaker 1: had also started carrying a red, white and blue keg
Speaker 1: after her first keg was shattered by a bullet. She
Speaker 1: was there during the battle, and she came through all
Speaker 1: of that unharmed. Although it does not appear that she
Speaker 1: left when the soldiers left. There's actually a picture of
Speaker 1: her standing on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg taken some time afterward,
Speaker 1: and it's possible that she stayed behind to help care
Speaker 1: for the wounded, and then she joined back up with
Speaker 1: her unit. Later after the war, she married Corporal Richard Leonard,
Speaker 1: and she was photographed with her keg at a reunion
Speaker 1: in eight Eventually, she and Richard divorced, and she died
Speaker 1: of an apparent suicide in nineteen o one. Before we
Speaker 1: move on, we should really note that although Marie was
Speaker 1: in combat at various times and she was paid a
Speaker 1: soldier salary, she was not actually there as a soldier.
Speaker 1: But there were female soldiers at Gettysburg. There were women
Speaker 1: like Mary's seas Goal, who disguised herself as a man
Speaker 1: so that she could fight alongside her husband. And there
Speaker 1: are other people whose stories and identities are less clear,
Speaker 1: people who were found to have female anatomy after being
Speaker 1: injured or killed in combat. There are at least five documented,
Speaker 1: including Sea's Goal too for the Union side, and three
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy, although it is possible that there were
Speaker 1: many more who went unnoticed and undocumented. Next, we'll have
Speaker 1: somebody who will be familiar to people who have seen
Speaker 1: the women's memorial at Gettysburg, and that's Elizabeth Thorne. She
Speaker 1: was born in Germany as Elizabeth Catherine Masser, and then
Speaker 1: after immigrating to the United States, she married John Peter Thorne,
Speaker 1: who went by Peter. They had three sons before the
Speaker 1: Civil War started, and then Peter joined the army in
Speaker 1: August of eighteen sixty two. Peter was the caretaker of
Speaker 1: Evergreen Cemetery and the family lived in the cemetery's art
Speaker 1: shaped gatehouse, which still stands today. When Peter joined the army,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth took over for him as caretaker while also taking
Speaker 1: care of their children, and when the Battle of Gettysburg began,
Speaker 1: She was also about six months pregnant. Six months pregnant
Speaker 1: and taking care of three little boys and acting as
Speaker 1: the caretaker of the cemetery. When the Confederate army started
Speaker 1: to arrive in Gettysburg at the end of June, they
Speaker 1: requisitioned food from the Thorn household, and then when the
Speaker 1: Federal army arrived a few days later, Elizabeth helped General
Speaker 1: Oliver Otis Howard get the Layo land. She sort of
Speaker 1: showed him which roads went where and what some of
Speaker 1: the local backways were that the Confederacy might not know about.
Speaker 1: She also provided dinner for some of the officers, although
Speaker 1: by that point she really did not have much left
Speaker 1: as thanks though, some of Otis's men helped her move
Speaker 1: some of the family's valuables down into the cellar for safekeeping,
Speaker 1: and they also told her that if she were ordered
Speaker 1: to leave the area, she should do so immediately, and
Speaker 1: that cemetery was part of Cemetery Hill, which became an
Speaker 1: active battlefield. On July two, the family was ordered to evacuate,
Speaker 1: although Elizabeth came back during the night to check on things,
Speaker 1: and she found that the families hogs had been killed
Speaker 1: and that the gatehouse was full of wounded soldiers. She
Speaker 1: left again to try to find food and shelter, and
Speaker 1: this time she stayed away until July seven. Once the
Speaker 1: family got back, they found that their home had just
Speaker 1: been ransacked, including what they had moved into the cellar.
Speaker 1: Amputations had been performed on their beds, so their feather
Speaker 1: beds and betting were almos beyond repair. It took her
Speaker 1: in three women days of Washington fix them, and that
Speaker 1: was after they first repaired the pump, and some of
Speaker 1: what they had was really just beyond repair. There were
Speaker 1: also dead bodies the waiting burial outside, along with the
Speaker 1: bodies of horses that had been killed in the battle.
Speaker 1: But Elizabeth Thorn is most well known for what happened
Speaker 1: after all of that. She had run into the president
Speaker 1: of the cemetery on her way home, and he told
Speaker 1: her that there was more work waiting for her than
Speaker 1: she could possibly do. In her own account, in the
Speaker 1: days after the battle, she wrote, quote, I got a
Speaker 1: note from the President of the Cemetery, and he said,
Speaker 1: Mrs Thorn, it is made out that we will bury
Speaker 1: the soldiers in our cemetery for a while. So you
Speaker 1: go for that piece of ground and commenced, sticking off
Speaker 1: lots and graves as fast as you can make them. Well,
Speaker 1: you may know how I felt. My husband in the army,
Speaker 1: my father an aged man. Yet for all the foul air,
Speaker 1: we two started in. I stuck off the graves, and
Speaker 1: while my father finished one, I had another one started.
Speaker 1: They did this in just terrible heat and filth and stench,
Speaker 1: because this was July and some of these bodies had
Speaker 1: been decaying for days. Later on, she had some friends
Speaker 1: who helped, but both of them became very ill and
Speaker 1: had to leave. A lot of people noted that the
Speaker 1: men who came to help her got too sick to
Speaker 1: continue on, and she was out there pregnant, carrying on
Speaker 1: with it. These burials went on for weeks. She buried
Speaker 1: thirteen bodies on August eleven, which was more than a
Speaker 1: month after the battle. They were still burying the dead
Speaker 1: up until Gettysburg National Cemetery opened in October. That was
Speaker 1: formally dedicated in November, but at that point a lot
Speaker 1: of bodies had already been buried or reburied there. Some
Speaker 1: of the bodies buried in Evergreen were ultimately moved to
Speaker 1: the National Cemetery. In the end, Elizabeth buried a hundred
Speaker 1: and five people with very little help. Ninety one of
Speaker 1: those were soldiers and fourteen were civilians. She wasn't compensated
Speaker 1: for the additional labor, or for the loss of her property,
Speaker 1: or the cost of cleaning and repairing the gatehouse. This
Speaker 1: was also a tiny, tiny fraction of the work that
Speaker 1: needed to be done. Gettysburg itself had a population of
Speaker 1: about twenty one people, but about eleven thousand people died
Speaker 1: as a result of the battle. About seven thousand died
Speaker 1: of their wounds immediately, and the rest followed in the
Speaker 1: days and weeks afterward. Elizabeth's daughter, Rose Mead Thorn, was
Speaker 1: born the September after the battle, and her middle name
Speaker 1: was named after General George Mead, who had commanded the
Speaker 1: Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg. Peter Thorne returned from
Speaker 1: the war in eighteen sixty five, and he and Elizabeth
Speaker 1: both died in nineteen o seven and two thousand two,
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg Women's Civil War Memorial was unveiled. It depicts
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Thorne clearly exhausted and pregnant with a shovel, and
Speaker 1: although she is the woman who was depicted in this memorial.
Speaker 1: It is a memorial to all the women. And now
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and have a
Speaker 1: little word from one of the sponsors to keep stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class going. So we talked just
Speaker 1: before the break about how the number of people killed
Speaker 1: in battle at Gettysburg was more than five times greater
Speaker 1: than Gettysburg's population of people living there, and the gap
Speaker 1: between the town's population and the number of wounded was
Speaker 1: even greater. Between twenty thousand and thirty thousand people were wounded,
Speaker 1: most of them stayed in Gettysburg for at least some
Speaker 1: time after the battle, and our next subject as an
Speaker 1: example of how long this situation remained really critical. The
Speaker 1: active fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg took place between
Speaker 1: July one and third. Euphemia Mary Goldsboro arrived around July twelfth.
Speaker 1: By that point, there was still a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do. Goldsboro was a nurse and one of many
Speaker 1: women from both sides of the war who went to
Speaker 1: Gettysburg during the battle's aftermath to try to care for
Speaker 1: the injured and dying soldiers. Goldsboro, who was known as Effie,
Speaker 1: was one of many Confederate supporters living in Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: She and other women there had been preparing for the
Speaker 1: fighting to come to them, so when Gettysburg ended in
Speaker 1: a Union victory and tremendous casualty numbers, they traveled from
Speaker 1: Baltimore to assist. When they arrived in Gettysburg, conditions were
Speaker 1: just really dire. Nearly all of the doctors and the
Speaker 1: surgeons had left with their respective armies, so the very
Speaker 1: few who were left behind were so overwhelmed that they
Speaker 1: could really only focus on the most urgent needs. Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: Hall at Gettysburg College was being used as a hospital
Speaker 1: for wounded from both sides, and that is where Goldsboro
Speaker 1: started working when she arrived. Here is how an unknown
Speaker 1: Confederate soldier described the conditions there quote. Unless it was
Speaker 1: a case of amputation needed immediately or the stopping of hemorrhage,
Speaker 1: they had not time to attend to anyone. Thus, for
Speaker 1: the first two weeks, there were no nurses, no medicines,
Speaker 1: no kinds of food proper for men in our condition
Speaker 1: and for men who were reduced to mere skeletons from
Speaker 1: severe wounds and loss of blood. The floor was a
Speaker 1: hard bed with only a blanket on it. Ventually, Goldsboro
Speaker 1: was assigned to Camp Letterman, which was a hospital camp
Speaker 1: set up near the battlefield. Goldsboro was in charge of
Speaker 1: a word with a hundred patients, fifty from each side,
Speaker 1: and the words of that same Confederate soldier quote. Miss
Speaker 1: Goldsborough recognized the importance of showing no partiality, and many
Speaker 1: of both armies owed their lives to her good nursing,
Speaker 1: common sense, and justice, while she gladly forgot party spirit
Speaker 1: of the time and saw the necessity of sacrificing herself
Speaker 1: to the good of the southern wounded dying soldiers of
Speaker 1: the Confederate Army. She remained their nine weeks, working incessantly
Speaker 1: forgetting the world and self, living only to comfort and
Speaker 1: support the suffering and dying. One of the men that
Speaker 1: she tried to save was Lieutenant Colonel Waller Tazewell, Patent
Speaker 1: of Virginia, who had been shot through the lung and
Speaker 1: his condition had reached a point that he needed to
Speaker 1: be propped up to be able to breathe. But there
Speaker 1: was just nothing there available for him to be propped
Speaker 1: up on, and so Goldsboro offered herself sitting on the
Speaker 1: floor and letting them secure him to her back, so
Speaker 1: they were basically back to and she was kind of
Speaker 1: forming a chair for him, and although she sat there
Speaker 1: overnight without moving, his condition was too grave and he
Speaker 1: died on July twenty one. Although she cared for men
Speaker 1: without regard to what side they had been on, her
Speaker 1: work was not entirely above board. She knew that the
Speaker 1: surviving Confederate soldiers were going to be transferred to prisons
Speaker 1: once they were well enough, and she thought that they
Speaker 1: should have proper clothes and boots when they went, But
Speaker 1: it was against the rules to give them these things,
Speaker 1: probably because of the risk that they might try to
Speaker 1: escape if they had them. So she came up with
Speaker 1: an excuse to go into town, and she came back
Speaker 1: with clothes and boots secured up underneath her hoop skirt,
Speaker 1: hoping that they wouldn't bang together or fall out when
Speaker 1: she made her way past the Union guards. This worked.
Speaker 1: Goldsboro left Gettysburg after about nine weeks, shortly after the
Speaker 1: death of a Texas soldier named Samuel Watson, who she seemed,
Speaker 1: based on her diary, to have really become quite attached to.
Speaker 1: She returned home and at first her family hardly knew
Speaker 1: her because she was so frail and exhausted, But eventually
Speaker 1: she recovered and she started smuggling again, this time to
Speaker 1: try to get things like male clothes and supplies to
Speaker 1: imprisoned Confederate men. She was also a courier and a spy,
Speaker 1: and she used a lap desk with hidden compartments to
Speaker 1: smuggle dispatches. She was ultimately caught while trying to help
Speaker 1: a prisoner escape, and her quote, treasonable plans and letters
Speaker 1: and traitorous poetry were confiscated. She was sentenced to banishment
Speaker 1: for the duration of the war. By coincidence, she was
Speaker 1: sent to Virginia on the same boat as Belle Boyd,
Speaker 1: who previous hosts of the podcast have done an episode on.
Speaker 1: She apparently did not like bell Boyd. Very curious about
Speaker 1: what the situation was there, but I did not look
Speaker 1: into it. She referred to Boyd as quote that horrid woman.
Speaker 1: Aside from demonstrating how Gettysburg's aftermath stretched on after the battle,
Speaker 1: Goldsborough's story also illustrates how a lot of women put
Speaker 1: aside their political leanings to care for the sick, injured,
Speaker 1: and dying. Goldsboro Let's be clear was a star supporter
Speaker 1: of the Confederacy, but at the battlefield's hospital, she gave
Speaker 1: compassionate care to anyone who needed it, no matter what
Speaker 1: side of the battle they had fought on. Outside of
Speaker 1: the medical community, though this definitely was not the case
Speaker 1: for all of gettysburg civilian population, a lot of them
Speaker 1: refused to harbor or assist Confederate sympathizers, including refusing to
Speaker 1: let sympathetic nurses board with them, and Goldsboro and other
Speaker 1: Confederate supporters were viewed with very understandable suspicion within their
Speaker 1: medical work as well. That same unknown soldier whose account
Speaker 1: we were reading from earlier reported that the reason her
Speaker 1: ward was half and half Federal and Confederate troops was
Speaker 1: just to make sure she didn't do anything treasonous. The
Speaker 1: next woman we are going to talk about is Margaret Divitt.
Speaker 1: You'll also see that spelled Devitt or sometimes even with
Speaker 1: an a as Davitt, and she was also known as
Speaker 1: mag Palm. She was part of Gettysburg's black community. There
Speaker 1: were people of African descent in Gettysburg for almost as
Speaker 1: long as there were Europeans. Some of the first Europeans
Speaker 1: to settle in the area brought enslaved Africans with them.
Speaker 1: Before that point, the area had been a hunting ground
Speaker 1: and a travel route for the native peoples in the area,
Speaker 1: but what is now Gettysburg does not appear to have
Speaker 1: ever been home to a permanent indigenous settlement. Of course,
Speaker 1: there is a whole history there that is outside of
Speaker 1: the scope of what we were talking about in this
Speaker 1: particular podcast. Pennsylvania passed an Act for the gradual abolition
Speaker 1: of slavery in seventeen eighties, so by the Civil War,
Speaker 1: Gettysburg's black community was free and numbered close to two
Speaker 1: hundred people are not quite ten percent of the population.
Speaker 1: Gettysburg had a school for black children and an African
Speaker 1: Methodist Episcopal church. Because of its proximity to the Mason
Speaker 1: Dixon line, Gettysburg was home to a lot of underground
Speaker 1: railroad activity. About a third of its black residence in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty had been liberated or had liberated themselves from
Speaker 1: Maryland or Virginia. But it was also an incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: place to be as a black person. Being so close
Speaker 1: to slave territory was a constant risk, especially in the
Speaker 1: light a fugitive slave laws that encouraged the capturing of
Speaker 1: people and taking them into slave territory, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: they had been previously enslaved or not. So Margaret Palm,
Speaker 1: who had been born Margaret Divitt or maybe Davitt, had
Speaker 1: direct experience with these dangers. She had been the target
Speaker 1: of an attempted capture herself. Her employer's son, David Schick,
Speaker 1: described it this way quote On this occasion, she was
Speaker 1: attacked by a group of men who made the attempt
Speaker 1: to kidnap her and take her south where they expected
Speaker 1: to sell her and derive quite a prophet. She was
Speaker 1: a powerful woman, and they would have from the sale
Speaker 1: derived quite a prophet. These men succeeded in tying Mag's hands.
Speaker 1: She was fighting them as best she could. With her
Speaker 1: hands tied, she would attempt to slow them and succeeded
Speaker 1: in one instance in catching an attacker's thumb in her
Speaker 1: mouth and bit the thumb off. When we did this
Speaker 1: as our live show, there was definitely some cheers of
Speaker 1: support for Meg at this moment. Rightly so. In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixties three, Palm was about twenty seven years old, She
Speaker 1: had at least one child, and she was living with
Speaker 1: a man named Alf Palm. They were tenants on the
Speaker 1: land of Abraham Bryan, a free black man who had
Speaker 1: lived in the area for about twenty years. Although a
Speaker 1: census taker listed her occupation as mistress Harlott, it appears
Speaker 1: that she actually had a job working cleaning and doing laundry.
Speaker 1: It appears that the census taker listed that as her
Speaker 1: occupation because she and Alf were not married at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have some words for that census taker. As the
Speaker 1: Confederate Army approached Gettysburg, many of its black residents fled.
Speaker 1: They knew that if they stayed they were likely to
Speaker 1: be captured and enslaved. That had happened and lots of
Speaker 1: other towns that the army had moved through as they
Speaker 1: made their way into Union territory. But leaving was really
Speaker 1: also a risk. People would be leaving their jobs behind
Speaker 1: as well. They would have to go without income for
Speaker 1: an unknown amount of time until the danger had passed.
Speaker 1: They would also be leaving behind personal possessions which were
Speaker 1: really likely to be taken, damaged, or destroy Foyd. So
Speaker 1: Margaret was one of the people who stayed to act
Speaker 1: as a lookout and warn the black community when they
Speaker 1: really could not wait any longer to go, and with
Speaker 1: her warning, many of Gettysburg's black residents did successfully evacuate
Speaker 1: before the battle began. Some that could not or did
Speaker 1: not leave were sheltered by their white employers or other friends,
Speaker 1: but this did not always totally work out. Uh There
Speaker 1: is at least one account of two black women who
Speaker 1: were sheltered in the cellar, but then when Confederate officers
Speaker 1: commandeered that home, those women were forced to come out
Speaker 1: and cook and care for them. At the same time,
Speaker 1: an unknown number of Gettysburg's black residents were captured by
Speaker 1: the Confederates and marched out of town. The house that
Speaker 1: Margaret and alf we're renting was largely destroyed in the battle.
Speaker 1: A lot of the fighting at Gettysburg was very urban,
Speaker 1: but she and her family survived. Her life after the
Speaker 1: war was a lot like it had been before. She
Speaker 1: continued to make a living by cleaning, doing laundry, and
Speaker 1: working as a porter. She and other black women also
Speaker 1: retrieved you reforms from soldiers who had been wounded or killed.
Speaker 1: They cleaned these uniforms, repaired them, and sent them back
Speaker 1: to the Union Army to reuse. Margaret Palm eventually saved
Speaker 1: up enough money to buy property of her own, and
Speaker 1: she also became known as an eccentric character around town,
Speaker 1: nicknamed Meg Palm at this point, and there were embellished
Speaker 1: stories recounting her daring do before and during the battle
Speaker 1: and her adventures afterward. Often these were reported in newspapers,
Speaker 1: but in those accounts, her speech was rendered as the
Speaker 1: sort of imagined dialect of enslaved people living on plantations
Speaker 1: in the South just is not how she spoke, right.
Speaker 1: It was very similar to our previous episode about the
Speaker 1: ain't i Ale woman's speech and how it was just
Speaker 1: sort of a made up, imagined wave of talking. We
Speaker 1: don't entirely know how she felt about becoming this kind
Speaker 1: of local celebrity, but she definitely did not appreciate how
Speaker 1: other people kind of took her story over for themselves
Speaker 1: and turned her into a caricature. She took care to
Speaker 1: tell her friends and her face only about what she
Speaker 1: had done in her own words. She also had a
Speaker 1: picture of herself taken later on, posed to show the
Speaker 1: way that her assailants had tried to bind her hands.
Speaker 1: Decades later, her great great granddaughter Catherine Carter related these
Speaker 1: family stories to another woman named Margaret. That was Margaret S. Creighton,
Speaker 1: author of the Colors of Courage Gettysburg's Forgotten History. They
Speaker 1: especially talked about her fighting back against those attempted captors.
Speaker 1: Almost thirty years after palms eighteen ninety six death, Elsie
Speaker 1: Singmaster published A Boy at Gettysburg, which used Palm as
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the character Maggie Bluecoat, and that fictional
Speaker 1: character was a conductor on the Underground Railroad and wore
Speaker 1: an officer's jacket from the War of eighteen twelve, thus
Speaker 1: her Bluecoat nickname. It is possible that the real Margaret
Speaker 1: was involved with the Underground Railroad and with Gettysburg's Slave
Speaker 1: Refuge Society, which was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church,
Speaker 1: but in some accounts her real story has been really
Speaker 1: conflated in fused with this fictional character. If she was
Speaker 1: involved with the Underground Railroad, she probably would have been
Speaker 1: a lot more secretive about it than the fictional character
Speaker 1: of Maggie Blue Coach. We should also know that Gettysburg
Speaker 1: was permanently altered for its black community after the battle
Speaker 1: was over. A lot of the people who fled never returned.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones who did come back were people
Speaker 1: who had property to come back to. A lot of
Speaker 1: that property had been seriously damaged or destroyed in the fighting.
Speaker 1: In the fall of eighteen sixty three, there were only
Speaker 1: sixty four black residents listed on the city's tax roll,
Speaker 1: which was a much smaller number than before the battle.
Speaker 1: Although the abolition of slavery made Gettysburg a much less
Speaker 1: dangerous place to live, from that perspective, it really became
Speaker 1: more of a stopping point than a destination as freed
Speaker 1: people moved north after the war. And we're going to
Speaker 1: pause once again for a little sponsor break. We take
Speaker 1: a break, and then we will come right back with
Speaker 1: more of Gettysburg's women. Matilda Appears, known as Tilly, was
Speaker 1: an ordinary but pretty well off civilian from Gettysburg. She
Speaker 1: was fifteen in July of eighteen sixty three when the
Speaker 1: battle happened. In eighteen eighty five, she published Gettysburg or
Speaker 1: What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle, which
Speaker 1: was her first person account. Tilly was the youngest of
Speaker 1: four children, and she was at school at the Young
Speaker 1: Ladies Seminary at the Gettysburg Female Institute on June when
Speaker 1: they first heard that the Confederate army was approaching. Their
Speaker 1: teacher told them all to run home as fast as
Speaker 1: they could, although she was sure that some of them
Speaker 1: couldn't have made it before the troops arrived. Her book
Speaker 1: gives a day by day accounting of the battle. At first,
Speaker 1: her tones pretty excited. She tacks about the insults and
Speaker 1: indignities of the Confederate army taking her horse. She also
Speaker 1: talks about their appearance and behavior, which she finds to
Speaker 1: be pretty raggedy and rude, but apart from that she
Speaker 1: sounds pretty upbeat. But when the actual fighting begins, things
Speaker 1: quickly become frightening. She describes a neighbor passing by on
Speaker 1: the way to Jacob White Hurt's farm south of town
Speaker 1: and asking for Tilly to come along, thinking that she
Speaker 1: was going to be safer there, and at first this
Speaker 1: seemed like a perfectly good plan, but as the battle shifted,
Speaker 1: it turned out to not be true at all. The
Speaker 1: farm was not far from Little Round Chop and that
Speaker 1: was the site of active fighting. She describes the house
Speaker 1: and barn becoming a field hospital for Union soldiers and
Speaker 1: treating at least one hundred men, and Tilly's words quote
Speaker 1: the number of wounded brought to the place was indeed appalling.
Speaker 1: They were laid in different parts of the house. The
Speaker 1: orchard and space around the buildings were covered with the
Speaker 1: shattered and dying, and the barn became more and more crowded.
Speaker 1: The scene had become terrible beyond description. This becomes one
Speaker 1: of those really unique insights into what the mindset of
Speaker 1: someone is like going through trauma. Tracy mentioned just a
Speaker 1: little bit ago that her accounts, before things really started
Speaker 1: getting heated, we're almost kind of excited. And then in
Speaker 1: the early part of the fighting, Tilly was terrified and
Speaker 1: describes herself as weeping in fear. But by the third day,
Speaker 1: she writes, quote, amputating benches had been placed about the house.
Speaker 1: I must have become inured to seeing the terrors of battle,
Speaker 1: else I could hardly have gazed upon the scenes now presented.
Speaker 1: Her account also mentions the death of Mary Virginia Wade
Speaker 1: known as Jenny, who's the only civilian known to have
Speaker 1: been killed directly in the fighting. There were other civilians
Speaker 1: who died as a result of the battle as well,
Speaker 1: including at least one who gave birth and wasn't able
Speaker 1: to get the necessary medical attention. Jenny was at the
Speaker 1: home of her sister, Georgia McClellan, who had also given
Speaker 1: birth just hours before the battle started. The McClellan home
Speaker 1: was directly in the line of fire between the two armies.
Speaker 1: Jenny was needing dough to make bread for the Union soldiers,
Speaker 1: and she was struck by a stray bullet and killed
Speaker 1: on the morning of July three. Tilly also writes about
Speaker 1: the conditions after the battle as she was returning home. Quote,
Speaker 1: as it was impossible to travel the roads on account
Speaker 1: of the mud, we took to the fields. While passing along,
Speaker 1: the stench arising from the fields of carnage was most sickening.
Speaker 1: Dead horses swell into almost twice their natural size, lay
Speaker 1: in all directions, Stains of blood frequently met our gaze,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of army accouterments covered the ground. Fences
Speaker 1: had disappeared, some buildings were gone, others ruined. The whole
Speaker 1: landscape had been changed, and I felt as though we
Speaker 1: were in a strange and blighted land. Are killed and
Speaker 1: wounded had by this time been nearly all carried from
Speaker 1: the field. With such surroundings, I made my journey homeward
Speaker 1: after the battle. Once the battle was over, till he
Speaker 1: helped care for the wounded, including several Union soldiers who
Speaker 1: were cared for in her own family home. And her
Speaker 1: book concludes with her adult self looking back on what
Speaker 1: had happened when she was a teenager and Gettysburg's recovery
Speaker 1: decades later. Her tone is pretty optimistic. Quote years have
Speaker 1: come and gone since the happening of the events narrated
Speaker 1: in the preceding chapters, but there is indelibly stamped upon
Speaker 1: my memory as when passing before me. In actual reality,
Speaker 1: the carnage and desolation, the joys and sorrows therein depicted,
Speaker 1: have all long since passed away. Instead of the clashing
Speaker 1: tumult of battle, the groans of the wounded and dying,
Speaker 1: the mangled corpses, the shattered canon, the lifeless charger, and
Speaker 1: the confusion of armies and a Creutermont, a new era
Speaker 1: of joy and prosperity, harmony and unity prevails. After the war.
Speaker 1: Tilly grew up, married, had children, and lived her life
Speaker 1: before dying on March fifteenth n Hers is one of
Speaker 1: a lot of eyewitness accounts of Gettysburg, including letters, journals,
Speaker 1: and published books, but It is also a unique perspective
Speaker 1: because it is from a civilian who was a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old girl at the time of the battle, and
Speaker 1: that brings us to our last women to talk about today.
Speaker 1: Tilly Pierce was an ordinary girl whose name we remember
Speaker 1: today because she published her experiences in a book. But
Speaker 1: so many other women and girls had very similar experiences
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty three, but there's were unrecorded and consequently unremembered.
Speaker 1: So you've probably heard the phrase well behaved women seldom history.
Speaker 1: Most of the time people interpret this is kind of
Speaker 1: a rallying cry celebrating the so called ill behaved women
Speaker 1: who broke new ground and made strides in a way
Speaker 1: that changed the world in defiance of how society thought
Speaker 1: they should act. A lot of times, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a make some noise and go make history. But that
Speaker 1: quote didn't come from Eleanor Roosevelt, or Marilyn Monroe or
Speaker 1: any of the other historically famous women that it's generally
Speaker 1: attributed to. It was first published in a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six paper in American Quarterly by Laurel though Thatcher ull Rich.
Speaker 1: At the time, she was studying at the University of
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, and her intent was very different from the
Speaker 1: way that people usually use that quote today. It was
Speaker 1: more about all the ordinary women who lived and worked
Speaker 1: and made a difference in their world but are not
Speaker 1: included in history books because their lives were quiet and pious.
Speaker 1: The full sentence from that paper is quote, well behaved
Speaker 1: women seldom make history against antinomians, and which is these
Speaker 1: pious matrons have had little chance at all all. Rich
Speaker 1: eventually wrote a book exploring how this quote has spread
Speaker 1: and evolved and what it means for a woman to
Speaker 1: actually make history. So Gettysburg was just full of pious
Speaker 1: matrons and other dutiful women and girls. Most of the
Speaker 1: men who were able to fight were away fighting, so
Speaker 1: the people left behind were mostly women, children, elders, and
Speaker 1: people with illnesses or disabilities. So ordinary women who lived
Speaker 1: in Gettysburg were the ones cooking for soldiers and tending
Speaker 1: the wounded and otherwise being part of the battle, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily with the excitement or flare or personality that
Speaker 1: would make them memorable to history. Those who couldn't or
Speaker 1: didn't leave ahead of the fighting found themselves in the
Speaker 1: middle of an active battlefield, and this was of course terrifying,
Speaker 1: with many women's journals and letters describing hearing soldiers in
Speaker 1: their houses above them while they hid in their cellars,
Speaker 1: and not knowing if those soldiers were friends or enemies.
Speaker 1: They went through all kinds of hardships, going without food
Speaker 1: after the armies requisitioned everything they had, or having their
Speaker 1: homes used as sniper posts which drew enemy fire. They
Speaker 1: all so endured the battles horrifying aftermath, with the unburied
Speaker 1: bodies of people and animals creating a stench so strong
Speaker 1: that they had to go around with handkerchiefs that were
Speaker 1: soaked in peppermint or penny royal, holding those over their
Speaker 1: noses and mouths. This lasted for months, pretty much until
Speaker 1: the weather got cold and the late fall and winter.
Speaker 1: They turned homes and barns and outbuildings into temporary hospitals
Speaker 1: and helped care for the wounded. They cleaned and repaired
Speaker 1: and dug graves and sweltering heat and torrential rainstorms, and
Speaker 1: often without enough food or clean beds to sleep in.
Speaker 1: The railroads and telegraphs were destroyed, so they did all
Speaker 1: of this without really being able to communicate with the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. And they also gave shelter to
Speaker 1: people who traveled to Gettysburg looking for friends and family members,
Speaker 1: who then became part of the recovery effort as well.
Speaker 1: And we also cannot forget the women who had made
Speaker 1: Gettysburg their home but then had to make the choice
Speaker 1: between leaving it behind or risking being enslaved. So we
Speaker 1: named this episode Fearless, Feisty, and unfly the women of Gettysburg,
Speaker 1: But a whole lot of women who were part of
Speaker 1: the Battle of Gettysburg's history weren't necessarily any of those things.
Speaker 1: There were so many ordinary women who were scared and
Speaker 1: exhausted or were just doing their best in an unimaginably
Speaker 1: horrifying situation. But their lives and their contributions still have
Speaker 1: value and they should not be forgotten. Before we move
Speaker 1: on to some listener mail, since this was a live show,
Speaker 1: we just want to thank all the people involved with it,
Speaker 1: so thanks so much to the Gettysburg Foundation and especially
Speaker 1: events coordinator Bethany Yngling for all of their help leading
Speaker 1: up to and during the show and for inviting us
Speaker 1: in the first place. Thanks also to Chris Gwinn from
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg National Military Park for leading us on a
Speaker 1: tour of the battlefield while they we were there. That
Speaker 1: was great, and thank you so much to everyone who
Speaker 1: came out and bore with us through the weather. We
Speaker 1: were getting ready, We were sort of doing our final
Speaker 1: go over of all of our notes, having some water,
Speaker 1: getting ready to go out there, and Holly walked into
Speaker 1: the kitchen they had they had put us up in
Speaker 1: a cottage that's right there um at the at the venue.
Speaker 1: Holly walked into the kitchen and kind of went WHOA.
Speaker 1: I was like, what what? Holly said, it's dark outside,
Speaker 1: And it turned out there was a severe thunderstorm warning,
Speaker 1: including the potential for a half dollar sized hail. So
Speaker 1: thanks to everybody who didn't just immediately go home and
Speaker 1: stay away. Yeah. I peeked out the window and could
Speaker 1: see people running from the tent. I was, uh, they
Speaker 1: had just postponed things. They handled the whole thing so
Speaker 1: beautifully and just kind of had a delay for a bit.
Speaker 1: We started about twenty minutes late after things had passed over.
Speaker 1: Thankfully it was quick, but yeah, everyone stuck it out
Speaker 1: and I was so so thankful for all of the
Speaker 1: listeners that came out said hello, Uh that was a
Speaker 1: really spectacular event. I had a fantastic time me too,
Speaker 1: And now I have listener mail. This is from Ursula,
Speaker 1: and Ursula says Hi, Holly and Tracy. I listened to
Speaker 1: her Winnipeg strike episode and loved it. I am from
Speaker 1: Winnipeg and I never knew just how big the strike
Speaker 1: was till this year when the city started installing historic
Speaker 1: exhibits throughout downtown. The Manitoba Museum has an early nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds recreated town inside the museum. It's a fairly large gallery,
Speaker 1: complete with homes, businesses, and even a movie theater that
Speaker 1: you can enter some buildings or even two stories. It
Speaker 1: was my favorite part of the museum as a child
Speaker 1: and a twenty two. It still is. The museum recently
Speaker 1: gave a massive nineteen nineteen strike update to the town.
Speaker 1: Though I must say that my experience with the exhibit
Speaker 1: was made so much better by a small group of
Speaker 1: relatives of strikers who were also there that day. They
Speaker 1: were passing on the personal experiences of their relatives. Walking
Speaker 1: through was really walking through a giant memory lane. It
Speaker 1: wasn't an event put on the museum. I just lucked
Speaker 1: out that day. It was a really special and suite.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the effort, fun and passion you
Speaker 1: put into the show. I love it, Dearly Sola, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for this email. Ursula. We have gotten
Speaker 1: several notes from folks about that um about that episode
Speaker 1: that folks seem to have really enjoyed, So I'm glad
Speaker 1: I stuck with it, even though I felt like we
Speaker 1: were having a little heavy dose of nineteen nineteen earlier
Speaker 1: this uh this year. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us about this there any other podcast, We're at
Speaker 1: history podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then
Speaker 1: we're all over social media at missed in History. That's
Speaker 1: where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. You
Speaker 1: can come to our website at missed in History dot
Speaker 1: com find show notes for all the episodes that Holly
Speaker 1: and I have are done together, and a sourciable archive
Speaker 1: of everything. Ever, and you can subscribe to our show
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, I Heart Radio app, and anywhere else
Speaker 1: you get podcasts. Stuffy Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,