Some of the greatest places to find the history of women is through its cemeteries, which was my goal this Women’s History month when I went to the Laurel Hill Cemetery to get a better understanding of female participation during the Civil War. The event was called Legendary Civil War Ladies: A One Book, One Philadelphia Event. The One Book, One Philadelphia Event is an event created by the Free Library of Philadelphia where a group of people read a selected work and use Philadelphia as a way to explore it further. This month’s book was Cold Mountain and so it fit perfectly with this event. The Legendary Civil War Ladies is a project that attempted to give eleven women, all of whom participated in the Civil War and are currently buried at Laurel Hill, a story. Focusing on one of the women mentioned in the event, I plan to show how this event worked and how it failed.
The article “The Feminized Civil War” written by Alice Fahs, discusses how women often participated in the Civil War by making the home their battle ground. Female domestic participation in the war was seen as important as male participation in combat (Fahs 1464). However, their participation in the war was only held within their domestic sphere. Martha Coston, one of the women buried in Laurel Hill, participated in the Civil War outside of the sphere set for her.
According to Kerry Bryan, the guide at Laurel Hill, Coston was the wife of an inventor who unfortunately died prematurely leaving her alone with four children. One day, as she was shifting through his things she found some rough plans for a signal flair for ships. His design did not work, but she was able to work on her version for ten years. The finished product became a crucial asset for the navy during the Civil War. Still, with all her accomplishments she did not really gain the recognition she deserved.
According to an article written by Deborah Merritt called “Hypatia in the Patent Office: Women Inventors and the Law, 1865-1900”, women were often tricked by men in the commerce business to either hand over their patents to a man or, if they wanted to fight, hire a male lawyer that also took advantage of them (Merritt 252). Most women inventors at this time did not receive support from male inventors and they often did not receive full payment for their inventions. Merritt even states that “Coston believed that her gender prevented her from obtaining a fair price from governments who purchased her flares” (Merritt 300). While Coston was one of the most interesting women we learn about during the event, we ended up only spending about ten minutes on her.
The event was originally intended to be an outside one where we were supposed to take a tour of the cemetery to see each gravesite for each of the women being discussed. However, it was a cold day and so they moved everything into a cramped room. Bryan was dressed up as Mrs. Elizabeth Hutter, one of the Civil War Ladies, and she gave the tour in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. She did her best to make it feel like we were transported into history, but it did not go smoothly because she read everything out of a binder.
Because of the presentation form, each woman was only given about ten minutes of spotlight time. This was not enough time for every lady because it created watered down versions of each woman’s story. It would have been better if they choose only four or five women to talk about. That way they can give a deep analysis of each woman. In the case of Coston, it would have been interesting to see an original patent for the signal flair or be able to see an original signal flair. Primary evidence would have made the experience a little more interesting.
In addition to this, I feel like the indoor alternative should have been more interactive. People came to the event expecting to roam around the grounds. Instead they had to sit in a small room for an hour and a half. Perhaps they could have had displays set up around the building were people could walk around and spend time with each lady at their own pace. Still, despite the slight letdown of the event, what little information they did present for each woman turned out to be pretty solid. The fact that they created a research project solely based on examining the women in the cemetery gives me hope that other places will soon want to do the same.
Works Cited
Bryan, Kerry. “Legendary Civil War Ladies”. Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia. 3 Mar. 2016. Tour.
Fahs, Alice. “The Feminized Civil War: Gender, Northern Popular Literature, and the Memory of the War, 1861-1900”. The Journal of American History 85.4 (1999): 1461–1494. Web.
Merritt, Deborah J. “Hypatia in the Patent Office: Women Inventors and the Law, 1865-1900”. The American Journal of Legal History 35.3 (1991): 235–306. Web.