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Woman joins Union army in male disguise
May 25, 1861
On this day in 1861, Sarah
Seelye enlisted in Company F, Second Michigan Volunteer Infantry
Regiment, under the alias Franklin Thompson. She was one of a number of
women who disguised themselves as men to enlist in the Civil War. She
had run away from home at age seventeen, disguised as a boy, to avoid an
unwanted marriage. After enlisting in the Union army in 1861, she
served for nearly two years as a male. Ironically, in her secret-service
duty she penetrated Confederate lines "disguised" as a woman. She
deserted the army and resumed life as a female in 1863. She later
published a fanciful, but highly successful, account of her experiences
in the army, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army (1865). She and
her husband moved to La Porte, Texas in the early 1890s. On April 22,
1897, Sarah Seelye became a member of the McClellan Post, Grand Army of
the Republic, in Houston. She was the only woman member in the history
of the GAR.
First meeting of Texas Division of United Daughters of the Confederacy
May 25, 1896
On this day in 1896, the
Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy met for the
first time in Victoria. The United Daughters of the Confederacy was
established in 1894 by the merger of state groups in Georgia, Missouri,
and Tennessee. The Texas Division was organized by Kate Cabell Muse, who
had earlier organized a local chapter in her hometown, Dallas. The
Texas Division has been active in marking historic locations and holds
annual memorial observances to remember not only Confederate veterans
but veterans of all wars. The division formerly sponsored the Texas
Confederate Home and the Confederate Woman's Home and each year awards
thousands of dollars in scholarships to descendants of Confederate
veterans. It also maintains the Texas Confederate Museum.
American Academy of Arts and Letters honors black Texas poet
May 25, 1966
On this day in 1966,
Melvin B. Tolson received the annual poetry award of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. Tolson, born in Missouri in 1898, was only
fourteen when his first poem was printed. He began teaching English and
speech at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, in 1924, and remained there
for twenty-three years. Several of Tolson's poems were published in Modern Monthly and the Modern Quarterly in the late 1930s, and in September 1941 the Atlantic Monthly
published his prize-winning "Dark Symphony," which was later set to
music by Earl Robinson and performed by Paul Robeson. Tolson wrote a
weekly column about black life in America for the Washington Tribune from 1937 to 1944. In the latter year his first collection of poetry, Rendezvous with America,
made its appearance. In 1947 Tolson joined the faculty of Langston
University in Oklahoma, where he remained until his retirement in 1964.
Also in 1947, Tolson was named poet laureate of Liberia, inspiring his Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953). In his last book Tolson returned to the world of Harlem with The Curator (1965), the first part of a projected work, Harlem Gallery. He died in Dallas in August 1966.
posted - 5.25.2012 - The Texas State Historical Association
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