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Mary Edwards Walker
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Mary Edwards Walker was an American physician and woman's rights activist. She was a physician in the army for the first three years of the Civil War. She is the only woman from the Civil War to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. Walker insisted on wearing pants rather than a dress for which she was harassed and even arrested for "masquerading in men's clothes." In 1917 her Medal of Honor was revoked because her service had not been combat-related.
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Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997.
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A crusader for women's equality, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker served as a surgeon for the Union army during the Civil War and was captured by the Confederates. She received this pocket Bible while in prison in Richmond, VA. A year after the war, Walker became the only woman ever to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. However, the medal was revoked in 1917 when Congress revised its standards to include only "actual combat with an enemy." Six decades later, the women's movement sparked new interest in Walker's story. In 1974, Smithsonian curators collected this Bible and other objects from Walker's grandniece and supported a campaign to have her Medal of Honor restored. In 1977, Congress reinstated the award.
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Mary Edwards Walker {1832-1919} was passionate about medicine and women's rights. She earned her medical degree in New York in 1855 and left private practice to volunteer her services to the Union Army when the Civil War began. In recognition of her devotion and bravery, President Andrew Johnson awarded Dr. Walker the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1865. After the war, she published several books and gave public lectures on feminist and health issues.
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Mary Edwards Walker was born on November 26, 1832, in Oswego, New York. She was the youngest daughter of Alvah Walker, a farmer, teacher, and self-taught physician, and Vesta Whitcomb Walker, who was ... a teacher. Influenced by reform movements advocating abolition and sexual equality that swept through their part of the state during the 1820s and 1830s, the Walkers were very liberal thinkers by the standards of the time. They supported the idea of equal education for boys and girls and urged all of their children - five daughters and a son - to aspire to professional careers and personal independence.
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Mary Edwards Walker was born in Oswego, N.Y., on November 26, 1832. She acquired her early education from her sisters and parents, particularly her father, a skilled teacher, farmer, and doctor. In 1855, overcoming considerable obstacles and the prejudices against women that existed in the mid-19th century, 22 year old Walker graduated from Syracuse Medical College and became one of the first female physicians. That same year she married classmate Dr. Albert Feller, and they set up practice in Rome, N.Y. After 10 years of separation, they were legally divorced in 1869.
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Mary Edwards Walker