Mary Edwards Walker was born on November 26, 1832, in Owego, New York. Her father was Avah Walker, a farmer, teacher and self-taught doctor. Her mother, Vesta Whitcomb Walker was a school marm.
Mary graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855, a full-fledged physician. Shortly thereafter, she married Albert Miller, whom she met in college. The couple set up a joint medical practice.
This feisty lady had an independent spirit. She wore a man's dress coat and pants to the wedding and insisted the phrase, "promise to obey," be eliminated. Mary was not about to "obey" anyone. She was a free spirit. Needless to say, the marriage and the joint medical practice didn't last long.
Mary was a bit on the wild side, according to social restrictions of the era. She wore bloomies (bloomers) and lived life to the fullest. When the Civil War broke out, she volunteered to serve in the Union Army as a doctor. The army did accept her, but wouldn't allow her to practice medicine. Women doctors were very rare in those days. Most people felt that only men should be doctors. This made Mary more determined to serve in the position as surgeon during her enlistment days.
At first, Mary worked in the Washington Patent Office Hospital, in Washington, D.C. She hated dresses and skirts. She showed up for work with men's pants under female clothing. Finally fed up with skirts that dragged around her ankles, Mary began dressing in only men's garments. She wore pants with a man's uniform jacket. Two pistols accompanied her everywhere she went. She tended wounded and dying men at the Battle of Bull Run, never once giving any thought to her own safety.
In 1862, Mary received the commission she'd been waiting for. She was now Army Surgeon of the 52nd Ohio in the Army of the Cumberland. She was a field surgeon for two years, tending to business at Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chickamauga and the Battle of Atlanta.
On April 10, 1864, Mary was taken prisoner by Confederate soldiers. She languished in a southern prison until August 12, 1864. She spent four months in squalid living conditions, not knowing what her fate would be. Her reprieve came through a prisoner exchange. She returned to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon. She spent the rest of the war working at a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky and an orphanage in Tennessee.
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