Born in December 1841 in New Brunswick (probably in York County), Sarah Edmonson, or Edmondson, received scant education as a child, and sometime in the 1850s she ran away from home. For a time she was an itinerant seller of Bibles, dressing as a man and using the name Frank Thompson. She gradually made her way west and by 1861 was living in Flint, Michigan. Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War she enlisted, as Frank Thompson, in a volunteer infantry company in Flint that became Company F, 2nd Michigan Infantry. Her disguise was a complete success for nearly a year. She took part in the battles of Blackburn╒s Ford and first Bull Run and in the Peninsular campaign of May-July 1862; and at Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, she was an aide to Colonel Orlando M. Poe. Twice or more she undertook intelligence missions behind Confederate lines ╥disguised╙ as a woman. She accompanied the 2nd Michigan to Kentucky early in 1863 and in April, for reasons that are now unclear, deserted.
Taking the name Sarah Edmonds, she worked as a nurse for the United States Christian Commission. In 1865 she published a lurid and very popular fictional account of her experiences as Nurse and Spy in the Union Army. She married in 1867 and thereafter moved often╤to Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Kansas. In 1882, living then in Fort Scott, Kansas, she began securing affidavits from old army comrades in order to apply for a veteran╒s pension, and in July 1884 the pension was granted by Congress to ╥Sarah E. E. Seelye [her married name], alias Frank Thompson.╙ She later moved to La Porte, Texas, where she died on September 5, 1898. A short time before, she had in Houston become the only woman to be mustered into the Grand Army of the Republic as a regular member.
