Brave Mary Owens

An undaunted and brave woman, indeed, was Mary Owens, of Pennsylvania. She accompanied, says a correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, her husband to the army, and fought by his side until he fell mortally wounded. Then she quit the army, and returned home in full uniform to tell her friends and neighbors of her strange experience for a woman, and of her sufferings and devotion to her country’s flag. She was in the army over eighteen months, and during that time took part in three severe battles. In the first engagement she was wounded by a ball in the face, and fell on the field. In the third battle she was again hit; this time in the arm. Her wounds required her to be taken to the hospital, where her true sex was discovered and the circumstances of her being in the ranks made known. She had enlisted in the town of Danville, Montour county, Pa., under the name of John Evans. It appears that her father was opposed to her marrying her sweetheart, Owens, and threatened her with violence if she did not give him up. The brave girl, nothing daunted, married Owens secretly, and then donned the blue and went with him to the war. Her husband was with her in the same company, and so heroically did Mary endure the hardships of the camp and the dangers of the field that no one suspected her sex until she was wounded. She saw her husband fall dead by her side, and then returned home wounded and a widow. She was young, rather pretty, and slight in form. This brave woman was of Welsh parentage, but a genuine Yankee in pluck and spirit. Of course she was for a long time a heroine in the neighborhood where she lived. I doubt if any woman in America ever had a more romantic career than brave and plucky Mary Owens.