Mollie Bean

Mollie Bean was a North Carolinian woman who, pretending to be a man, joined the 47th North Carolina Infantry, a regiment of the Confederate army in the American Civil War.

Mollie Bean
Other name(s)Melvin Bean
Allegiance Confederate States of America
Service/branch Confederate States Army
Unit 47th North Carolina Infantry
Battles/warsAmerican civil war

Civil War service

Mollie Bean took on the name of Melvin Bean[1][2] and was captured in uniform by Union forces outside Richmond, Virginia, on the night of February 17, 1865. When questioned, she said she had served with the 47th North Carolina Infantry for two years and been twice wounded,[2] but neither of these wounds led to her discovery.[3] Bean was described in the press as "manifestly crazy" and charged with being a "suspicious character", i.e. a spy.[4] She was incarcerated at Richmond's wartime prison Castle Thunder,[1][5] where Mary and Molly Bell were held prisoners in October 1864.

Her captain was reported to be John Thorp.[1] The Richmond Whig, which reported Bean's discovery on February 20, 1865, assumed that other soldiers in the company knew Bean was a woman; according to historian Elizabeth D. Leonard, this was likely not true.[2]

A fictionalized version of Bean is a major character in Harry Turtledove's alternative history novel The Guns of the South, where she is cast as a former prostitute.[6]

See also

References
  1. Hall, Richard H. (2006). Women on the Civil War Battlefront. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. p. 150. ISBN 0-7006-1437-0.
  2. Leonard, Elizabeth D. (1999). All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies (1st ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 222. ISBN 0-3930-4712-1.
  3. Blanton, DeAnne; Cook, Lauren M. (2002). They Fought like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War. Louisiana State University Press. p. 97. ISBN 0-8071-2806-6.
  4. Blanton & Cook (2002), pp. 154, 198.
  5. Blanton & Cook (2002), p. 120.
  6. Leonard (1999), note 39, p. 325.

Further reading


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