Aspire Scholar Academy
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker
Hero Report
Ella Johnson
April 30 2015
Mary Edwards Walker was born on November 26 1832 in the town of Oswego, New York. She was born the fifth girl to Alvah and Vesta Whitcomb Walker. Her father believed in equal rights for his girls, and also believed that woman's clothing was tight-fitting and immodest. Perhaps Mary’s beliefs were founded upon her fathers, for Mary grew up to be an enthusiast for womens rights. At the end of her teenage years she actively sought out an education in the Syracuse Medical College, (the nation's first medical school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis) paying $55.00 for all three 13 week semesters. Mary was the only woman in her class. She graduated with a doctor of medicine degree in 1855. Mary, now Dr. Walker went into private practice and married Albert Miller, though her feminism was displayed when her attire at the marriage ceremony was trousers and mens coat, not to mention she also kept her own name. They both started a medical practice in Rome, yet the public was not yet ready to recieve a woman physician, so their business floundered. They were divorced 13 years later. When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon -- the first female surgeon in the US Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the US Patent Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga). In September 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons. She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award. In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only “actual combat with an enemy” She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer, touring here and abroad on women's rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association in 1866. Walker prided herself by being arrested numerous times for wearing full male dress, including wing collar, bow tie, and top hat.
She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and commentary called Hit, a combination autobiography and commentary on divorce in 1871, and a second book, Unmasked, or the Science of Immortality, about infidelity in 1878. In 1872 in Oswego, Mary E. Walker attempted to vote, one of many women who made the attempt over the years on the road to full suffrage. In 1890, Mary declared herself a candidate for Congress in Oswego. The next year, she campaigned for a U.S. Senate seat and, the following year, paid her way to the Democratic National Convention. She died in the Town of Oswego on February 21, 1919 and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery Road. Ironically, the 19th Amendment giving women the vote was ratified that same year.
People like Mary Edwards Walker were the beginning of the woman's rights movement, a movement that has shaped and sculpted our country in ways the founding fathers couldn’t have. She was independant, yet she wasn’t selfish. She had a good head and heart, and was able to discern the serious problems in her society at that time, when almost no one else could. How could people with that gift not contribute their time? She was also determined to help out in the war, to use the skills she earned through her schooling. If the United States did not have brave people that were willing to risk everything for something they worked hard to believe, we would not have a United States at all. Mary was a not the only courageous one. Yet her courage must have helped numerous others as her Dad’s courage helped hers. As Mary concluded in 1897, "I am the original new woman...Why, before Lucy Stone, Mrs. Bloomer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were—before they were, I am. In the early '40's, when they began their work in dress reform, I was already wearing pants...I have made it possible for the bicycle girl to wear the abbreviated skirt, and I have prepared the way for the girl in knickerbockers."
We, like Mary, have the opportunity to use bravery. Have you ever been the first one to give a standing ovation? Have you ever said “hi” to your mean neighbor? Have you ever had to give a speech in front of a LOT of people?
This, to me, is courage, of the most tedious kind. These things are perhaps what some would not even call real bravery, yet they are what we face today. Dr. Walker didn’t only have to exercise this “tedious courage,” she had to face the bullets wizing past her head as she helped the wounded. She had to face law enforcers when she wore men's clothes. She was not only brave, she was determined, persistent, she observed, discerned, and was independent and immovable. Though Mary might’ve died with only one (women’s rights) principle engraved on her headstone, she could not have obtained the recognition for this principle without many other attributes.
Dr. Edwards story many not be one that brings tears to my eyes and fragile emotion, rather, it pushes me rim-rod straight, gives me a resolute gleam in my eye, and gives me power ringing through my heart and soul, in short, a determination to be like God. The difference is in a soft, touching, haunting hymn, sung by a few beautifully trained sopranos. But rather, Mary’s story is a full base-alto sound, belted and cried with power and strength of soul. That is what I feel when I read of Dr. Mary Edward Walker. I feel a power in maintaining freedom throughout my country. I feel strength in understanding the importance of being in the world but not of it. I feel the responsibility of serving my fellow men. I feel with sincerity the importance of a life led by God. I put a foot boldly forward each day. In the end, tears do come to my eyes through the zeal and tenacity, the power of God in my life, influenced by Dr. Edwards. The power of God in Mary’s exceptional story. The power of God in our song deeply cried without restraint.
World Wide Web:
Women Of Courage http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/profiles.htm Written and produced by the St. Lawrence County, NY Branch of the American Association of University Women
Changing the Face of Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_325.html From the National Library of Medicine
Medal Of Honor News; The 1st and only woman Medal of Honor recipient: A statue in her honor http://www.medalofhonornews.com/2011/02/1st-and-only-woman-medal-of-honor.html Posted on Sunday, February 20, 2011 and posted by Homer L. Wise
Books:
Harness, Cheryl. Mary Walker Wears the Pants Published by Albert Whitman & Company
