An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, Alias Private Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers

Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (1843–64) was one of several hundred women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the American Civil War (1861–65). Unlike most of these women however, the letters that Wakeman wrote home were preserved by her family and later published. They provide a rare glimpse of what life was like for a woman fighting as a common soldier in the Civil War under the guise of a man. The young farm girl from Bainbridge, NY, was the eldest ofn nine children and, joined the Union forces in 1862 and enlisted under the name of Lyons Wakeman. Her regiment departed for Washington, D.C. in October 1862. Wakeman was involved in several battles, but died, like so many other soldiers during the war, not on the battle field but from illness , but gravely ill, because of an epidemic infection on June 19, 1864.