Born in 1839 to Isaac and Betsy Edmondson on a farm in New Brunswick, Canada, Emma was her father’s fourth and final disappointment. He wanted sons—strong sons who could work the farm. Fate played a cruel trick on Isaac Edmonds. Aside from four daughters, his only son, Thomas, suffered from epilepsy making him useless in his father’s eyes. Bitterly disappointed, Isaac forced his girls to don boys’ clothes and work the fields. As the youngest, Emma took the brunt of his temper. No matter how hard she tried to please her father, Isaac found fault with everything she did. Not fast enough. Not sharp enough. Not good enough.

One thing Isaac couldn’t control was his daughter’s wild imagination. Emma dreamed of faraway places and adventure. But back in the 1800s only men could have such things. It was no wonder that in her musings, she pictured herself as a man. A teenage tomboy, she preferred trousers to skirts and could outshoot any boy her age. Still her father frowned upon her bad behavior.

When a local farmer expressed interest in marrying her, Isaac gladly agreed, but Emma hated the idea and with her mother’s help she ran away. She changed her name to Edmonds and took a job at a millinery shop in Salisbury. Hat making, however, didn’t bring the adventure she yearned for, but Emma bided her time. Eventually, when Isaac discovered her whereabouts, she knew what she had to do—vanish. Emma Edmonds disappeared and Franklin Thompson took her place.

Traveling salesman Franklin Thompson peddled bibles in rural Canada for the Boston-based Hurlbut and Company. Not one to settle down, he hiked to Hartford, Connecticut, and then headed west to Flint, Michigan—still selling bibles. Making friends in Michigan was easy for the young man. A sharpshooter, he was outgoing, hard working and careful to keep his true identity under wraps. One of Thompson’s buddies was William R. Morse, captain of a volunteer troop who called themselves The Flint Union Greys. When President Lincoln’s call went out, Thompson rushed to the nearest recruiting office where having a physical exam consisted of officers who eyeballed the men. They either looked healthy or they didn’t. Thompson, deemed fit enough, was assigned to Flint’s Company F of the Second Michigan Volunteer Infantry, formerly the Flint Union Greys. His position? A male nurse.

Company F was sent to Washington, D.C. where Private Frank Thompson found himself in the midst of the First Battle of Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia. Hundreds of men lay wounded and dying. With little rest and dampened spirits, Thompson did his best to give comfort and administer aid. Working closely with the doctors, he made countless tourniquets, set dozens of broken bones and assisted with even more amputations.

Thompson’s tireless dedication and diligence did not go unnoticed. Singled out by his superiors, he was recommended for a special assignment with the newly created Federal Secret Service. Originally designed as a spy system to infiltrate the Confederate ranks, only the best men were chosen. Thompson made the grade and, in between his nurses’ duties, was given a secret mission—cross Confederate lines into Yorktown and return with vital information from enemy troops.

Thompson’s first order of business was to find a believable disguise. He bought old work clothes, shaved his head and colored his skin completing the costume with a black, wooly wig topped by a worn hat. Hiding a loaded revolver, Thompson slipped through enemy lines under cover of darkness. In the morning, he joined a group of black men conscripted by the Confederates to build their fortifications. Calling himself ‘Cuff’, he easily fell into step working alongside them, learning all he could. By night, he wrote detailed notes, carefully sketching what he’d seen and heard, then hiding the papers in the soles of his shoes.

Realizing that he needed critical information that only officers could give, Thompson resorted to bribery. Trading places with a water boy, he carried a pail throughout the camp easily picking up details. Thompson left enemy territory with several black men who had orders to take food to an outlying post. Once there, he was told to replace a picket recently killed by a Union soldier. Thompson walked the line until dark then ran away to safety.

The troops soon headed to Williamsburg where on May 5, 1862, Thompson’s regiment fought in another bloody battle. The overworked medics carried the wounded on stretchers directly from the battlefield to makeshift hospitals where stacks of discarded limbs greeted them. At night, the exhausted medical staff never gave up. Carrying torches, they waded knee-deep in mud still searching for victims, careful not to step on their fallen comrades.

Soon after, his troop was sent to the Chickahominy River where the Confederates destroyed the bridges to keep the Union Regiments from crossing. Here, Thompson accepted another secret mission. Drumming up petticoats, a skirt and a shawl, he posed as an old Irish peddler, Bridget O’Shea.

With the bridges out, he had to cross the Chickahominy River on horseback. Fighting the current, as well as debris that raced along past him, he somehow managed to get to the other side when he began feeling feverish. Thompson soon diagnosed himself with malaria. For the next three days, he suffered in the swamp battling fever and pain. Finally, he dragged himself to a small abandoned farmhouse where he discovered Allen Hall, a dying Confederate soldier. Still a nurse at heart, Thompson refused to abandon him. He even promised to take Hall’s gold watch to the Confederate Major McKee.

Thompson described his meeting with McKee: “The major, rough and stern as he was, sat there with his face between his hands and sobbed like a child. Soon he rose to his feet, surveyed me from head to foot and said, ‘You are a faithful woman…’” It was the one time Thompson felt guilty for spying.

More fighting followed. Thompson fell back into nursing to the point of exhaustion. He described the Battle of Fair Oaks as “…enough to make the angels weep.” After only two days of fighting, 15,000 men were lost. Sick with fever himself, he continued caring for wounded men when he wasn’t burying the dead.

For the next several months, Thompson continued in his dual roles as male nurse and spy. One mission found him disguised as a black woman assigned to Rebel headquarters. Posing as a cook for Confederate officers, he often overheard them discussing military plans. One morning as he picked up an officer’s coat, papers fell out—military orders for General Lee’s army and his plan to capture Washington. Anxious to take them back to his superiors, he slipped them inside his skirt and left the camp. Records indicate that Private Thompson made three visits to the Rebel High Command within a ten-day period bringing back valuable information each time.

Sick with malaria himself, going to a hospital was out of the question. Refusing to risk his secret, he traveled with his regiment to Antietam instead. The Battle of Antietam would go down in history as one of the Civil War’s deadliest: Never had Thompson witnessed so much bloodshed. Whenever there was a lull in the battle or the Union troops retreated, the medical team quickly moved in. They piled soldier after soldier into ambulances as they raced across the blood soaked field to save whomever they could.

Thompson recalled: “Heaps of slain, both friend and foe, lay side by side. A sunken lane behind which dead soldiers from both sides were stacked three and four deep was later rechristened Bloody Lane…cries for help, pierced by shrieks of paroxysm; some begging for a drop of water; some calling on God for pity; and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun; some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names as if the dearest were bending over them.”

On December 13, 1862, Thompson found himself once again in the midst of heavy fighting—this time at Fredericksburg. Taking a break from nursing, Thompson carried messages from General Poe to his men. While dodging bullets and cannon fire, he galloped on horseback across frontlines for twelve hours straight making his way in between the fighting soldiers. The men admired his valor and marveled at his limitless strength and determination.

Despite illness and the severe winter that left him with frostbite, Thompson readily accepted a new spy mission in the spring of 1863. This time when he infiltrated enemy lines in Lebanon, Kentucky, he pretended to be a Confederate and swore his loyalty to the South. While riding with the Rebel soldiers, they ran into a band of Union men. Bullets were exchanged, but Thompson managed to escape. Luck was on his side when the Union soldiers recognized their comrade and whisked him away. The Confederates labeled him a traitor.

The Secret Service knew that further missions might turn deadly for Thompson. If caught by the Rebels, he would surely be hanged as a deserter. Not wanting to lose him completely, they allowed him to remain a Union soldier, but become a civilian spy. He was sent to Louisville where he posed as a young Canadian who was simply curious about the ongoing war. Taking a job as a clerk at a dry-goods store, he traveled to the Confederate camps selling goods to the soldiers. He gained the confidence of a Confederate spy who not only bragged about his own accomplishments, but boasted about other Rebel spies, as well. Two of them were arrested thanks to Thompson’s clever ruse.

With his spying days nearly over and his malaria flaring up, doctors urged Thompson to go to a hospital for the medical help he needed. Keeping his secret at all cost, he chose to desert. And so Frank Thompson, Civil War Hero, disappeared without a trace on April 19, 1863 and Emma Edmonds took his place.

Emma Edmonds traveled to Ohio seeking medical help. Once recuperated, she intended to rejoin her troops, but to her disappointment, Frank Thompson had been labeled a deserter. As such, Emma could not safely resume his identity so she entered Oberline College. She married Linus H. Seelye, a carpenter also from New Brunswick, Canada, and bore three children—two boys and a girl. All died young so the Seelyes adopted two sons to help them heal. Emma also wrote a book about her Civil War adventures titled, Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse and Spy. It turned into a bestseller—175,000 copies worth, but Emma didn’t make a profit. She donated the money to various soldiers’ aid organizations.

As she grew older, collecting the Army pension she’d earned became important, but even more important was clearing her name. She traveled to Flint, Michigan and looked up her old Army buddies. Amazed that their comrade, Frank Thompson, was really a woman, they rallied around her and submitted statements attesting to Thompson’s bravery and acts of heroism.

Finally, on July 5, 1884, bill HR 5334 was signed by President Chester A. Arthur “Granting a pension to Mrs. Sarah E.E. Seelye, alias Franklin Thompson. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives…to place on the pension roll the name of Sarah E.E. Seelye, alias Frank Thompson, who was a late private in Company F, Second Regiment of Michigan Infantry Volunteers at the rate of $12 per month.” This bill took care of the pension, but not the desertion. It took two more years and a second bill before President Grover Cleveland finally gave Frank Thompson his honorable discharge.

After a move to Texas, Emma was accepted into the Grand Army of the Republic, (GAR)—the only woman ever allowed in. Proud of her service record, Emma died on September 5, 1898 and was buried in a small cemetery with services conducted by members of the GAR. Many of her fellow soldiers were outraged. They knew she was a hero and deserved to be buried in a military cemetery. The men persisted and, in 1901, her body was moved to a GAR plot in Houston’s Washington Cemetery.

It’s been estimated that at least 400 women disguised themselves as men and actively participated in the Civil War. Sarah Emma Edmonds’ service, however, stands out making her unique among both men and women. While keeping her own secrets, she managed to care for the sick and wounded under the most devastating circumstances. She risked her life infiltrating enemy camps uncovering classified information to help the Union. Born a Canadian, she adopted America and proved her loyalty time and time again: “I am naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious, and a good deal romantic—but patriotism was the true secret of my success.”