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Sarah Emma Edmonds was born in New Brunswick, Canada in 1842, the fifth daughter of Isaac and Elisabeth Leeper Edmondson. Her father, a farmer, was bitterly disappointed with Sarah as he had wanted a son to work his land for him. Sarah tried very hard to be the boy her father always wanted, abandoning female dress and becoming an expert horsewoman and markswoman. However, this was all to no avail: sadly, she never won the approval of Isaac. In 1859, she ran away from home to escape the man she described as ‘The Brutal Father’. Sarah fled to the USA, where dressing as a man to draw less attention to herself, she adopted the name of ‘Frank Thompson’. By 1861, ‘Frank’ was working selling Bibles door-to-door in Flint, Michigan, and so successful in ‘his’ guise that he was escorting young ladies in ‘his’ carriage. When President Lincoln issued his first call for volunteer troops, ‘Frank’ wanted to answer the call and patriotically serve ‘his’ new homeland. The army at that time didn't require a full physical examination. However, it still took ‘Frank’ four tries to get into the Union Army. On April 25, 1861, Sarah Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a male nurse in Company F, of the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This is 'his' story. |
