Major Pauline Cushman

This is Pauline Cushman, a Union spy, born as Harriet Wood on June 10th, 1833 in New Orleans. Her father moved the family to Grand Rapids, Michigan, but when she was 17, Pauline ran away to New York to become an actress. She received small parts and caught the attention of a theater owner from New Orleans, who then hired her. Pauline then married Charles Dickinson, a musician, on February 7th, 1853 and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he found work as a music teacher.

Two children and many years later on October 22nd, 1861, Charles enrolled as a musician in the band of the 41st Ohio Infantry where he suffered chronic dysentery and was discharged on June 9th, 1862. After her husband’s quick death on December 8th, 1862, Pauline left her children in the care of her sister-in-law in Ohio in order to return to acting and she eventually wound up in Union-controlled Louisville, Kentucky. She was soon performing on stage for a theater company and performed a role in The Seven Sisters.

In March 1863 she was approached by two paroled Confederate officers who offered her a $300 bribe if she would propose a toast to the Confederacy while she was on stage during her performance. Pauline readily accepted the money and promised the toast in the next evening’s performance. She immediately reported the Confederates’ offer to the Union provost marshal who believed the toast would prove as an expression of loyalty to the South and allow her to gain entry to exclusive Confederate circles. Pauline was then recruited as a spy and encouraged to make the toast.

The following evening, Pauline addressed the audience saying, “Here’s to Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy. May the South always maintain her honor and her rights.” The gesture had the desired effect: she was fired from the theater company and became an instant celebrity with the Southerners.

Pauline then reported to Colonel Truesdail, chief of the Union Army Police in Nashville where she was ordered to travel south and report back on the state of Confederacy defenses in central Tennessee. After being publicly evicted from the Union lines, Pauline was labeled as a Confederate sympathizer. As a cover, she pretended to be looking for her brother who was a Rebel officer.

Pauline easily became the darling of the Southern troops thanks to her good looks and interest. She received many invitations from Confederate officers to accompany them along their lines of patrol which allowed her to collect information on Rebel troop strength and positions.

Colonel Truesdail told her never to make written notes or drawings, but to commit all of the Rebel information by memory. Pauline ignored his warnings and made drawings of the fortifications at Shelbyville and Tullahoma, Tennessee and concealed them in her boot.

While attempting to return to the Union lines, Pauline was arrested under suspicion. She made an unsuccessful escape and her incriminating notes were found. Under questioning, Pauline related her cover story of being sent beyond federal lines as a result for her outspoken support for the Confederacy. Still suspicious, she was tried as a spy and ten days later she was found guilty, but became ill in the prison. Though she was truly sick, she presented an image of being worse off than she really was. She was deemed too unhealthy to travel to the execution site and left behind at the home of a civilian doctor. As the Union Army of the Cumberland under General William Rosecrans advanced to cut off the Confederates from aiding the Rebel army in Mississippi which was under siege by General Ulysses S. Grant. The Rebels finally abandoned Shelbyville and Pauline was rescued three days before her scheduled execution.

Pauline was then transported to Nashville. With her cover blown, Pauline’s spy days were over. General Granger and General James A. Garfield awarded her the honorary rank of major of cavalry. She traveled north, joined the lecture circuit dressed in the uniform of an army major, and told paying audiences embellished stories of her adventures.

Both of her children to her late husband died in childhood and Pauline married and widowed two more times. After marrying Jeremiah Fryer in Florence, Arizona on January 29th, 1879, they ran a hotel and stagecoach stop and livery stable and Fryer was elected sheriff. After the death of an adopted daughter the couple separated and Pauline lived in El Paso, Texas in 1892. She did sewing in exchange for food and a place to sleep and finally applied for Federal pension from her first husband’s military service.

On December 1st, 1893, Pauline Cushman Dickinson Fichtner Fryer, amid rumors of suicide, died of a drug overdose at the age of 60. Major Cushman's remains now rest in the Officer's Circle at the Presidio's National Cemetery in San Francisco. Her simple gravestone reads, Pauline C. Fryer, Union Spy.