This is a great piece of Illinois history. i hope the resoration goes
as planned.
DW
On 11/13/06, G Frazier <macoupincounty(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
Thought this was interesting.
gf
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Restoration planned for home of female Civil War soldier
By F.N. D'ALESSIO | Monday, November 13, 2006
The one-room house is small and unprepossessing. With its shuttered windows
and the multiple padlocks that used to be inside its door, it's secretive,
too _ much like the person who lived in it for some 40 years.
Now, to honor one of Illinois' most unusual Civil War veterans, plans are
being made to move the 130-year-old Albert Cashier/Jennie Hodgers house
back to its original site in the Livingston County village of Saunemin from
a storage site in nearby Pontiac.
The house's secret was that Cashier and Hodgers were the same person.
Jennie Irene Hodgers was born in County Louth, Ireland, on Christmas Day in
1843 and later sailed to New York with her family.
But she already was calling herself Albert D.J. Cashier when she turned up
in Belvidere, Ill., and enlisted in the 95th Illinois Regiment in 1862. She
served as an infantryman through three years and some 40 Civil War battles.
Later, it was as Cashier that she lived and worked in Saunemin, voted in
elections, collected her Army pension and moved in 1911 to the Illinois
Soldiers' and Sailors' Home (now the Illinois Veterans Home) in Quincy.
She became Jennie Hodgers again only when she was transferred in 1913 to
the former Watertown State Hospital near East Moline and psychiatrists
forced her to wear female attire.
But while she was confined at Watertown, men from her old unit rallied to
her defense, convincing the federal Pension Board to rule in 1914 that she
could continue to collect her pension as Pvt. Albert D.J. Cashier.
And at the insistence of Saunemin residents, that was the name she was
buried under _ clad in her Civil War uniform _ after her death in 1915.
Illinois State University historian Sandra Harmon called the local support
for Hodgers "remarkably open-minded, considering the attitude of the time
that a woman who dressed as a man was threatening _ even evil."
Saunemin Mayor Mike Stoecklin said the house will be moved back to Saunemin
by the end of the year, though restoring it will take longer.
He said a lecture by former Pontiac tourism director Betty Estes convinced
him the house should be restored to its original site. Estes personally
stepped in to save the house 10 years ago when Saunemin volunteer
firefighters wanted to burn the house as a training exercise; she had it
dismantled and trucked to Pontiac for safekeeping.
"They'll probably have to throw a big sympathy party for me when they take
the house back to Saunemin," said Estes, 75. "But at least they now know
the value of it. It has a fascinating story."
Cashier/Hodgers was hardly the only female soldier to serve in the Civil
War. Sharon MacDonald, a retired military historian from Carlock, Ill.,
said disguised female enlistment probably occurred in all major U.S.
conflicts before World War I.
Some women tried to join to avoid separation from husbands, brothers and
lovers in the ranks; others acted out of patriotism, the desire for
adventure, or rebellion against enforced gender roles.
Researchers DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook (Burgess), in their 2002
book, "They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War,"
estimated that as many as 400 women might have served at times in either
the Union or Confederate armies.
But Blanton and Cook said the 5-foot-3 Hodgers was unique in that she is
the only woman known to have served to the end of the war undetected and to
draw a military pension afterward. Hodgers also was one of few known women
soldiers who lived as a man before the war and continued to do so after
discharge, they said.
Her motivation for cross-dressing might have been economic, rather than
sexual, they suggest.
As an illiterate immigrant girl, Hodgers could have found lawful employment
only as a domestic servant. But in male disguise, she could work in
factories or as a farmhand. At enlistment, Hodgers gave her occupation as
"laborer, farmhand and shepherd." A private in the Union army earned more
than an agricultural worker.
The enlistment physical would have been no problem, Blanton and Cook said.
Army physicians usually only checked recruits for functioning limbs, a
working trigger finger and enough teeth to tear open gunpowder cartridges.
And once in the ranks, a boyish-looking woman like the 110-pound Hodgers
would be aided in her disguise by the baggy uniforms of the day, which
soldiers never removed except for extremely infrequent baths. The Civil War
"tent cities" also afforded more privacy than modern barracks.
Hodgers served with the 95th Illinois until it was mustered out, traveling
some 9,600 miles _ most of it by foot. She was briefly captured by a
Confederate patrol one night near Vicksburg, but made a daring escape back
to Union lines.
She was also in the disastrous Red River campaign in Louisiana, the Union
victory at Nashville and the capture of Mobile at the end of the war.
Despite the rigors of the campaigns, Hodgers was never wounded.
In 1869, she moved to Saunemin, where she served as town lamplighter and
did odd jobs. She often worked for the Chesbro family, who fed her most of
her meals, built the house for her and provided her cemetery plot.
Several generations of Saunemin residents watched Hodgers marching in
veterans' parades and doing her civic duty by voting at a time when only
Wyoming and (briefly) Utah allowed women to do so.
Hodgers' true gender wasn't learned until late in 1910, when State Sen. Ira
M. Lish accidentally broke her leg when he backed his car over her while
she was working in his driveway. Lish swore the doctor who made the
discovery to secrecy and used his political influence to obtain a room for
Hodgers at the veterans home.
If authorities at the Quincy home knew the soldier's secret, they didn't
reveal it. But doctors at Watertown State were less discreet. Their
unmasking of Hodgers made national headlines.
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
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