Excerpt: Jennie Irene Hodgers was born in County Louth, Ireland, on
Christmas Day in 1843 and later sailed to New York with her
family.....But she already was calling herself Albert D.J. Cashier
when she turned up in Belvidere, Ill., and enlisted in the 95th
Illinois Regiment in 1862. She served as an infantryman through
three years and some 40 Civil War battles.
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Restoration planned for home of female Civil War soldier

By F.N. D'ALESSIO
Quad City Times, IA
Monday, November 13, 2006

http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2006/11/13/ap-state-il/d8lbl1t80.txt

The one-room house is small and unprepossessing. With its shuttered
windows and the multiple padlocks that used to be inside its door,
it's secretive, too _ much like the person who lived in it for some
40 years.

Now, to honor one of Illinois' most unusual Civil War veterans,
plans are being made to move the 130-year-old Albert Cashier/Jennie
Hodgers house back to its original site in the Livingston County
village of Saunemin from a storage site in nearby Pontiac.

The house's secret was that Cashier and Hodgers were the same
person.

Jennie Irene Hodgers was born in County Louth, Ireland, on Christmas
Day in 1843 and later sailed to New York with her family.

But she already was calling herself Albert D.J. Cashier when she
turned up in Belvidere, Ill., and enlisted in the 95th Illinois
Regiment in 1862. She served as an infantryman through three years
and some 40 Civil War battles.

Later, it was as Cashier that she lived and worked in Saunemin,
voted in elections, collected her Army pension and moved in 1911 to
the Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Home (now the Illinois Veterans
Home) in Quincy.

She became Jennie Hodgers again only when she was transferred in
1913 to the former Watertown State Hospital near East Moline and
psychiatrists forced her to wear female attire.

But while she was confined at Watertown, men from her old unit
rallied to her defense, convincing the federal Pension Board to rule
in 1914 that she could continue to collect her pension as Pvt.
Albert D.J. Cashier.

And at the insistence of Saunemin residents, that was the name she
was buried under _ clad in her Civil War uniform _ after her death
in 1915.

Illinois State University historian Sandra Harmon called the local
support for Hodgers "remarkably open-minded, considering the
attitude of the time that a woman who dressed as a man was
threatening _ even evil."

Saunemin Mayor Mike Stoecklin said the house will be moved back to
Saunemin by the end of the year, though restoring it will take
longer.

He said a lecture by former Pontiac tourism director Betty Estes
convinced him the house should be restored to its original site.
Estes personally stepped in to save the house 10 years ago when
Saunemin volunteer firefighters wanted to burn the house as a
training exercise; she had it dismantled and trucked to Pontiac for
safekeeping.

"They'll probably have to throw a big sympathy party for me when
they take the house back to Saunemin," said Estes, 75. "But at least
they now know the value of it. It has a fascinating story."

Cashier/Hodgers was hardly the only female soldier to serve in the
Civil War. Sharon MacDonald, a retired military historian from
Carlock, Ill., said disguised female enlistment probably occurred in
all major U.S. conflicts before World War I.

Some women tried to join to avoid separation from husbands, brothers
and lovers in the ranks; others acted out of patriotism, the desire
for adventure, or rebellion against enforced gender roles.

Researchers DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook (Burgess), in their
2002 book, "They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American
Civil War," estimated that as many as 400 women might have served at
times in either the Union or Confederate armies.

But Blanton and Cook said the 5-foot-3 Hodgers was unique in that
she is the only woman known to have served to the end of the war
undetected and to draw a military pension afterward. Hodgers also
was one of few known women soldiers who lived as a man before the
war and continued to do so after discharge, they said.

Her motivation for cross-dressing might have been economic, rather
than sexual, they suggest.

As an illiterate immigrant girl, Hodgers could have found lawful
employment only as a domestic servant. But in male disguise, she
could work in factories or as a farmhand. At enlistment, Hodgers
gave her occupation as "laborer, farmhand and shepherd." A private
in the Union army earned more than an agricultural worker.

The enlistment physical would have been no problem, Blanton and Cook
said. Army physicians usually only checked recruits for functioning
limbs, a working trigger finger and enough teeth to tear open
gunpowder cartridges.

And once in the ranks, a boyish-looking woman like the 110-pound
Hodgers would be aided in her disguise by the baggy uniforms of the
day, which soldiers never removed except for extremely infrequent
baths. The Civil War "tent cities" also afforded more privacy than
modern barracks.

Hodgers served with the 95th Illinois until it was mustered out,
traveling some 9,600 miles _ most of it by foot. She was briefly
captured by a Confederate patrol one night near Vicksburg, but made
a daring escape back to Union lines.

She was also in the disastrous Red River campaign in Louisiana, the
Union victory at Nashville and the capture of Mobile at the end of
the war. Despite the rigors of the campaigns, Hodgers was never
wounded.

In 1869, she moved to Saunemin, where she served as town lamplighter
and did odd jobs. She often worked for the Chesbro family, who fed
her most of her meals, built the house for her and provided her
cemetery plot.

Several generations of Saunemin residents watched Hodgers marching
in veterans' parades and doing her civic duty by voting at a time
when only Wyoming and (briefly) Utah allowed women to do so.

Hodgers' true gender wasn't learned until late in 1910, when State
Sen. Ira M. Lish accidentally broke her leg when he backed his car
over her while she was working in his driveway. Lish swore the
doctor who made the discovery to secrecy and used his political
influence to obtain a room for Hodgers at the veterans home.

If authorities at the Quincy home knew the soldier's secret, they
didn't reveal it. But doctors at Watertown State were less discreet.
Their unmasking of Hodgers made national headlines.

--
A service of the Associated Press(AP)

C Copyright 2006, The Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA


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