Mary Edwards Walker: America’s First Female Medal of Honor

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, America’s first female surgeon and first female Medal of Honor winner was born in November 1862 in Oswego, NY. She graduated in 1855 from Geneva Medical College in New York, just six years after Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from there as the first female doctor with a medical degree.

After college, Mary and her physician husband tried to open a medical practice in NY, which failed since the public did not accept a female doctor. Although she was not permitted to serve as a Medical Officer due to her gender. In 1863, Mary was certified as a US Army surgeon, treating wounded soldiers near the front-line battlefields such as Fredericksburg, VA, and Chattanooga, TN, during the Civil War.

In 1864, she was captured and held as a spy for four months by the Confederacy.

On November 11, 1865, President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Medal of Honor for that service. Although her medal was rescinded in 1917, it was restored in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter.

After the Civil War, she was awarded a disability pension but was denied a military pension since she had never been officially commissioned as an officer.

She then became an advocate for women’s rights, including the right to vote.

She wore men’s clothing, saying it was less restrictive on the farm and the battlefield. She was arrested several times for her clothing choices and was not permitted to vote in 1871.

When the suffrage movement gained traction in the 1900s, she testified in the US House of Representatives in support of women’s right to vote.

She has been publicly honored twice. In 2023, Fort Hill in Virginia was renamed in her honor and in June 2025, her image was put on a quarter as part of the American Women Quarters Program. The coin shows Walker holding her pocket surgical kit and wearing her surgeon’s pin and her Medal of Honor, which is also highlighted on its own within the design.

Bonnie O’Leary BSN, RN, LGBHC, LNC

Content from https://www.pcscoins.com/. Image from United States—Online Coin Club.