Sarah Rosetta Wakeman aka Lyons Wakeman: A Woman’s Life as a Man in the Civil War

In 1940, Jackson Doane, of Binghamton, unearthed a packet of letters, a ring and a picture in his family’s attic from Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, the older sister of Jackson’s great-grandmother. She was a family member that seemed to be little spoken about — and little known. In 1976, Jackson read those letters, discovering that they were letters of a woman passing herself off as a man while serving in the Civil War.

Portrait of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman.