Mood:
chillin'Topic: Feminism
Cathay Williams was born in 1844 to a freed man of color and a so-called woman of bondage, making her legal status that of a slave in the state of Missouri. In 1861, Union forces took over the town of her birth, Independence, and pressed her into service. Ironically, captured slaves were designated as contraband, and Cathay was forced to serve in the military as a part of the 8th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
After traveling as a cook with the infantry for a few years and witnessing many battles (including the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Red River Campaign), she decided to conceal her gender and enlist as a man in 1866 in The United States Army. Seeing many African American men serve inspired her own tenure with the military, and she gave her name as William Cathay. During her three year engagement, she served in St. Louis. Only her cousin and one close friend were privvy to her gender, and they kept her secret.
In 1868, after an illness that required surgery put her under medical care, she revealed her gender to a post-operative surgeon. In 1868, she was discharged by her commanding officer, Captain Charles E. Clarke.
After her discharge, Cathay married and moved to Fort Union, NM and later to Pueblo, CO. While in Pueblo, her husband stole her money and a team of horses in the town. As she was infuriated with the theft and was probably afraid of being associated with him, she turned him in. Later, she moved to Trinidad, Colorado, where she worked as a seamstress and operated a boarding house. In 1876, a reporter heard about her story and interviewed her for The St. Louis Daily Times.
Despite the fact that Williams served with the US Military from 1861 - 1868, she was denied her military pension when she was hospitalized for diabetes and neuralgia in 1891. Unlike other women who had served in the military during and before the Civil War, Williams had no influential friends to make her case, and she died in 1892.