[3] Kady Brownell was born in 1842 in a tent on a British army camp in Kaffraria, South Africa, to a French mother and Scottish father.

In the early 1860s, Kady worked as a weaver in the mills of Providence, where she met Robert Brownell, who she married in April 1861.

She also saved the lives of a number of soldiers:[5] Just as a number of Union regiments were getting into their battle positions on the morning of March 14, members of the 5th Rhode Island came out of a clump of woods from an unexpected direction, giving the appearance that they might be a disguised rebel force preparing to attack.

[6] Following the Civil War, Brownell was the only female to receive discharge papers from the Union Army.

In September 1870, she became a member of Elias Howe Jr. Post #3 of the Grand Army of the Republic in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

[5] Brownell died on January 5, 1915, at the Women's Relief Corps home in Oxford, New York.