Sarah Emma Edmonds (born Sarah Emma Evelyn Edmondson,[1] married name Seelye, alias Franklin Flint Thompson; December 1841 – September 5, 1898) was a British North America-born woman who claimed to have served as a man with the Union Army as a nurse and spy during the American Civil War.
Although recognized for her service by the United States government, some historians dispute the validity of her claims as some of the details are demonstrably false, contradictory, or uncorroborated.
The youngest child, she grew up with her sisters and brother, Thomas, on their family's farm near Magaguadavic Lake, not far from the border with the U.S. state of Maine.
[3]: 17 She changed her last name to Edmonds in order to hide from her father, and started a millinery shop with a friend in Moncton, New Brunswick.
According to her memoir, Thompson's career took a turn when an American spy in Richmond, Virginia, was discovered and put before a firing squad, and her friend James Vesey was killed in an ambush.
Another time, she entered the Confederacy as an Irish peddler by the name of Bridget O'Shea, claiming that she was selling apples and soap to the soldiers.
[7][non-primary source needed] Thompson suffered an injury before the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862, when she took a trip to Berry's Brigade in order to deliver mail.
Rather than return to the army under another alias or as Frank Thompson, and risk execution for desertion, she decided to serve as a female nurse under her real name at a Washington, D.C. hospital for wounded soldiers run by the United States Christian Commission.
"[5][page needed] In 1867, she married Linus H. Seelye, a mechanic with whom she bore three children,[8] but all three died in their youth, leading the couple to adopt two sons.
"[11]: 193–204 Patricia Wilde wrote in her dissertation that many memoirs of the period, including Edmonds, Belle Boyd, and Loreta Velasquez, were purposefully using sensational rhetoric.
"A kind of pathetic appeal, sensational rhetoric is the use of shocking, exciting, and thrilling language and/or subject matter for persuasive purposes.
"[12]: xii She argues that "disenfranchised nineteenth-century women used sensational rhetoric to circumvent obstacles that prevented them from publicly discussing issues related to the American Civil War.
"[12]: xii A number of fictional accounts of her life were written for young adults in the 20th century, including Ann Rinaldi's Girl in Blue.
American author James J. Knights presented a fictionalized account of Edmonds' wartime experiences in his book Soldier Girl Blue, published in 2019.
[14] [15] Inscription: Sarah Emma Edmonds, - 2nd Michigan Infantry - Soldier, Nurse, & Spy Disguised herself as a man (Franklin Thompson) Awarded a US Army Pension.