Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, "Private Lyons Wakeman"

One Female Soldier’s Struggle to Live and Die in the Civil War

Nov 24, 2008

During the American Civil War, there were women that went beyond the call of their duty to become soldiers. Sara Rosetta Wakeman, or 'Lyons Wakeman' was one such soldier.

With the speed and strength of any man in battle, hundreds of women answered the call to bear arms for the Union or the Confederacy during the period known as the Civil War. Many of those women were found out, and sent to the hospitals to become nurses, sent home, or sent to insane asylums as patients. But dozens of other women were able to evade detection, fight in battle, die as heroes, or survive the war to live rich lives as either men or women until their death. One such woman to fight in the Civil War as a man undetected was Sarah Rosetta Wakeman. What she gave her family was economic stability, first-hand knowledge of the war, and a hidden pride to share with the generations to come.

Born in 1843, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman went by her middle name of Rosetta. She was the oldest of nine children, and being so, knew that without a grown son to help the family, it was possible that the family would continue to get poorer, and inevitability homeless. As soon as she was old enough, at the age of seventeen, and after she obtained a elementary education, she went to work as a domestic on the family farm. Being the eldest child in the family, Rosetta was the primary helper to her father, and therefore became used to wearing clothes typical for men or working rural women. Working as a domestic had limited respectable occupations, such as nanny, cook, laundress and chambermaid. These domestic jobs paid very little, so it isn’t shocking that Rosetta ran away from her hometown of Bainbridge, New York, to join the rest of the country in the Civil War conflict just at the age of nineteen when no marriage prospects seemed plausible.

In the last of the summer days in 1862, a nineteen year old Rosetta left her small dairy farming community to begin her life as her new identity, known plainly as Lyons Wakeman. She worked as a barge operator and coal handler on the outskirts of Binghamton, which stretched the entire Chenango Canal. Every chance she got, she would write home and let the family know that their ‘son’ was doing well, and that whatever she was able to send home by way of payment was for the family to with what was needed. These letters always included begging for forgiveness for what she did to the family, so it is assumed that her flight from home was a domestic issue. While looking for another job, Rosetta ‘Lyons’ came across recruiters in Binghamton for a brigade about to join in the War. She signed up, where her word, oath and signature was enough to enlist. For two years Private Lyons Wakeman fought with her comrades in the 153rd New York State Volunteers. She sent most of her earnings home with letters, which the family kept. On occasion Rosetta signed letters with simply Rosetta, but other times with the name of Edwin R. or Lyons, showing that she was internally struggling with her identity. By mid-1864, after her survival through many obstacles, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman died of a camp-contracted dysentery in Marine General Hospital, where she was undetected as a woman, and buried as Lyons Wakeman with full military honors at Chalmette National Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. One year later, in 1865, her home state of New York counted her as Lyons Wakeman, a causality for the Union Forces.

Many soldiers, men and women alike, came from poor, agrarian, immigrant, or frontier families. Many of these women left to be with their husbands, or their lovers, or to seek a greater meaning in their lives by being part of the bigger issues in their country or neighboring country. There were women, who like Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, left to be independent, and to help their families in time of economic distress. The women who did disguise themselves as men to join the war, were heroes in a time before Women’s Rights. These women soldiers fought, many survived, but many perished on the fields of battle where only men were suspected to be.

Blanton, DeAnne & Lauren M. Cook. (2002). They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.

Tsui, Bonnie. (2003). She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War. Guilford, Connecticut: The Globe Pequot Press.

The copyright of the article Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, "Private Lyons Wakeman" in US Civil War is owned by Maureen Zieber. Permission to republish Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, "Private Lyons Wakeman" in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.