Sara

This morning I went to a Civil War Reenactment and spent a wonderful 3 hours talking with all the people doing the "living history" exhibits. I talked to General Grant, to President and Mrs. Abe Lincoln, the unit seamstress, the cook, the laundress (I'll never again complain about doing laundry after watching what it entailed back then), the surgeon, the undertaker and Harriet Beecher Stowe among others. It was fascinating! The lady holding the photo in the main blip was really entertaining. She had large photographs of women who masqueraded as men to fight in the civil war, & as she held each one up she shared their stories. She's holding a photo of Sara, who was born in the Appalachian Mountains, & later fell in love with a young man on a nearby farm, whose family was unfortunately feuding with hers. They snuck off and got married, came back home, and when Sara's family threatened to kill him, he left for the train station to go fight for the Confederacy. Sara, not planning on being left behind, cut her hair, somehow managed to get a confederate uniform and showed up at the train station saying she was her husbands' younger brother, & the officer believed her. She and her husband fought in several battles together, but fearing his wife would be injured or killed, her husband, upon seeing a patch of poison ivy, had an idea of how to get discharged. He took his clothes off and rolled in the poison ivy. When his skin festered he went to see the surgeon, who, thinking the man had smallpox, had him discharged immediately. Sara merely changed clothes, said she was his wife who'd come to get her sick husband, & off they went. Part way home they ran out of money, so they joined a rogue group of men who were raiding and robbing. They both found they enjoyed it a lot, and have been referred to as an early "Bonnie and Clyde".
When they were almost captured, Sara again changed clothes to appear as a man, and she and her husband joined up with the Union Army (because the Union Army was closer to where they were); they delivered supplies to various units.....including supplying themselves. Eventually they settled down on a farm and raised 4 children. Sara died in 1913, and about a year later her husband died under suspicious circumstances. He was run over on the railroad tracks by a pumper car manned by two people.....many people think he was killed in retaliation for his robbing and raiding, then placed on the tracks where he was purposely run over to make it look like an accident. You can't make this stuff up! Extra #1: Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln  #2: the unit seamstress (who actually sews on lost buttons & fixes holes, tears, etc. for the reenactment people) #3: shooting off the canon  #4: the guitar player/soldier (who asked if I would like him to play and sing something for me, and should it be sad or happy....I chose happy, and it DID make me smile) #5: a Union soldier  #6: Harriet Beecher Stowe (who talked about her life, why she wrote the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin", how the South hated it and said she'd made it up, how she traveled to Europe to talk about her book, & how Queen Victoria cried when she read it)   :)