Question 1-4
Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the
1 Congressional Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other
women, was honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October
1997.
Controversy surrounded Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832, in the town of
Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is marked with a
historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many of the reform
2 movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid-1800s. He believed strongly in education and
equality for his five daughters: Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one son, Alvah). He also
believed they were hampered by the tight-fitting women's clothing of the day.
Walker became an early enthusiast for Women's Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of dress
3 reform. She discarded the unusual restrictive women's clothing of the day. Later in her life she donned full
men's evening dress to lecture on Women's Rights.
4
In June 1855 Walker, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in the nation
when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school and ope
which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She graduated at age 21 after three 13-week
semesters of medical training for which she paid $55 each.
In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller. At their wedding, Walker wore trousers and a man's
5 coat, and later decided to keep her own name. Together they set up a medical practice in Rome, N.Y., but
the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice floundered.
When war broke out, Walker came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as
a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon - the first female
This passage can best be classified as
an essay.
O a biography.
a narrative.
O an editorial.