Mary Edwards Walker- Gabriel c.
One of the bravest women ever to live
The beginning
Mary was born on November 26, 1832 in Oswego, New York. Her father was Alvah Walker , and her mother was Vesta Whitcomb Walker. She was the youngest daughter of Alvah Walker, a farmer, teacher, and self-taught physician, and Vesta Whitcomb Walker, who was also a teacher. She had five sisters and one brother.
Young mary
Dr. Mary Walker
An inspiration
She fought for women's rights. As you may know women didn't have many rights back in the 1800's such as they couldn't vote and weren't allowed to do things such as own land , enlist in the army, and had to wear certain clothing. Mary changed that as she fought for women of the 1800's. Walker had enthusiastically embraced the tenets of the emerging reform movement in the United States. One of the first and most symbolic confrontations with the establishment was over women's clothing, which at the time featured tight corsets and awkward, ankle-length hoop skirts. Until the "bloomer dress" (invented by Amelia Bloomer) became a political statement for women's rights advocates during the early 1850s, Walker was among the first to hem her skirt to just below the knee and replace her petticoats with a pair of long, full trousers that eventually came to be known as "bloomers."
Trophy trouble
oh no
during a visit to Washington in 1917, the same year her Medal of Honor was revoked for lack of proper War Department documentation (it was restored sixty years later by President Jimmy Carter), Walker fell on the Capitol steps and suffered injuries from which she never fully recovered. She died two years later at her home in Oswego at the age of 86, alone and virtually penniless, remembered more for her peculiarities than for her brave and honorable wartime service to her country.