Mollie Bean

Mollie Bean
Other name(s)	Melvin Bean
Allegiance	Confederate States of America
Service / branch	Confederate States Army
Unit	47th North Carolina Infantry
Battles / wars	American Civil War

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.

Civil War service

Mollie Bean took on the name of Melvin Bean[1][2] and was captured in uniform by Confederate forces outside Richmond, Virginia, on the night of February 17, 1865.^[citation needed][3] 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.[4] Bean was described in the press as "manifestly crazy" and charged with being a "suspicious character", i.e. a spy.[5] She was incarcerated at Richmond's wartime prison Castle Thunder,[1][6] 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.[7]

See also

• List of female American Civil War soldiers
• List of wartime cross-dressers
• Mary and Molly Bell
• Timeline of women in war in the United States, pre-1945

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. Richmond Whig, February 20, 1865, page 2.
4. 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.
5. Blanton & Cook (2002), pp. 154, 198.
6. Blanton & Cook (2002), p. 120.
7. Leonard (1999), note 39, p. 325.

Further reading

• Blanton, DeAnne (Spring 1993). "Women Soldiers of the Civil War". Prologue Magazine. 25 (1). OCLC 929686890.

External links

• "What part am I to act in this great drama?
• K.G. Schneider - Women soldiers of the Civil War