Jennie's Secret

Image by: Courtesy of Ruth Morehart Estate/Dwight Historical Museum.

Jennie's Secret

From: Linda Paul
Length: 00:18:05

Take a look at this picture. Maybe you can figure out that the Civil War soldier on the right is a woman. But the guy sitting next to her sure couldn’t, and neither could the rest of her fellow soldiers. They didn’t conduct physical exams back in those days the way the military does now. The army’s policy, one observer quipped, was “ don’t test the eyes, count ‘em.“ Read the full description.

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Piece Description

The non-bearded soldier in this picture was known to her comrades as Albert Cashier. But she was born in Ireland on Christmas Day of 1843 as Jennie Hodgers. This is the story of a woman who posed as a man during the Civil War and went on to live most of her life as a man in the tiny town of Saunemin, Illinois. Through the years the town has been ambivalent about their most famous citizen & has struggled to figure out what to do with her old house.

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This story was produced by Linda Paul, with help from Jay Allison and the public radio website Transom.org, with support from the Open Studio Project funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.