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Item Data
Title Seelye, Sarah Emma Edmonds as Thompson, Franklin
Collection Number unknown
Collection Number unknown
Type of Resource Image
Genre Carte de visite
Subject Seelye, Sarah Emma Edmonds
Subject Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye
Subject Thompson, Franklin
Subject Franklin Thompson
Subject Second Michigan Infantry
Subject 2nd Michigan Infantry
Subject American Civil War
Subject private
Subject Flint (Mich.)
Subject Fort Scott (Kan.)
Date Created 1861-1863
Use Restrictions Use of this image requires permission from the Archives of Michigan Please contact the Archives with questions regarding use or reproduction.
Notes
Description Portrait of Sarah Seelye, 1867. Genesee County. Enlisted in company F, Second Infantry, May 17, 1861, at Flint for 3 years, age 20. Mustered May 25, 1861. Sarah E. E. Seelye of Fort Scott, Bourbon County, Kansas makes affidavit that she and Franklin Thompson were and are one and the same person. Franklin Thompson was granted an honorable discharge by the Secretary of War to date April 19, 1863. For nearly two years, Thompson remained with his regiment, sharing all its toils, privations and marches, and the various engagements in which the regiment participated, at Bull Run and the seven days fighting of McClellan's Peninsular Campaign. During this time he was never absent from duty and was zealous and efficient in the Union cause. In the spring of 1863 the Second Infantry was in Kentucky, where Thompson was taken ill with malarial fever and applied for a furlough. His application was denied. Being unfit for duty and unwilling to go to a hospital, Thompson went to Oberlin, Ohio, but the disease contracted by the hardships of the Peninsular Campaign not yielding to treatment, she, as Sarah E. E. Seelye assumed her proper dress and while convalescing wrote her book, entitled "Nurse and Spy" which has a large sale, the profits of which she contributed to the Christian Sanitary Commission. Afterward she became a nurse and did efficient work in the hospitals until the close of the war. For her sacrifices in the line of duty, her splendid record as a soldier, her unblemished character and disabilities incurred in the service, an act was passed by Congress granting her a pension of $12 per month. Died at Laporte, Texas, September 5, 1898.