Born: 1 September 1844, United States
Died: 1893
Country most active: United States
Also known as: William Cathay
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Cathay Williams was born to an enslaved mother and a free father in Independence, Missouri in 1844. During her adolescence, she worked as a house slave on the Johnson plantation on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1861, Union forces occupied Jefferson City during the early stages of the Civil War. At this time, captured slaves were officially designated as contraband and some served in military support roles such as cooks, laundresses, or nurses. Before her voluntary enlistment, at just 17 years old, Williams served as an Army cook and a washerwoman. In this role she accompanied the infantry all over the country. Williams served under the service of General Philip Sheridan and witnessed the Red River Campaign and the Battle of Pea Ridge.
Despite the prohibition against women serving in the military, Williams enlisted in the U.S. Regular Army under the false name of “William Cathay” on November 15, 1866. She enlisted for a three-year engagement, passing herself off as a man. Williams was assigned to the 38th U.S. Infantry Regiment after she passed the cursory medical examination. Though this exam should have outed her as a woman, the Army did not require full medical exams at this time.
Shortly after her enlistment, she contracted smallpox and was hospitalized. Williams rejoined her unit in New Mexico. There, possibly due to the effects of smallpox, the heat, or the years of marching, her body began to show signs of strain. Due to her frequent hospialization, the post surgeon finally discovered she was a woman and informed the post commander. She was honorably discharged by her commanding officer, Captain Charles E. Clarke on October 14, 1868. Though her disability discharge meant the end of her tenure with the Army, her advenure continued. She signed up with an emerging all-black regiment that would eventually become part of the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.
Following her discharge, Williams went on to work as a cook at Fort Union, New Mexico (now Fort Union National Monument) and later moved to Pueblo, Colorado. Though she married, it ended badly after her husband stole her money and a team of horses. Williams had him arrested and then moved to Trinidad, Colorado, where she worked as a seamtress. It was during this time that her story first became public. A reporter from St. Louis heard rumors of a female African-American who had served in the army and came to interview her. Her life and military service narrative was published in the St. Louis Daily Times on January 2, 1876.
Around 1889 or 1890, Williams entered a local hospital and applied for a disability pension based on her military service. Though there was a precedent for granting pension to female soldiers, (Deborah Sampson, Anna Maria Lane and Molly Williams disguised themselves as men in the Revolutionary War), Williams request was denied. In September 1893, a doctor examined Williams. She suffered from neuralgia and diabetes, and had all her toes amputated and walked with a crutch. The doctor decided that she did not qualify for disability payments. The exact date of her death is unknown, but it is believed she died shortly after she was denied.
What Makes Cathay Williams An American Hero: Though over 400 women served in the Civil War posing as male soldiers, Williams was the first African American woman to enlist and the only documented woman to serve in the United States Army, while disguised as a man, during the Indian Wars. Williams is also the only known female Buffalo Soldier. Williams’ determination to serve her country demonstrates the extraordinary feats women have accomplished simply trying to live their lives.
The following is republished from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
There is no gravestone marking the final resting place of Cathay Williams. Nor is there one for her alter ego, Private William Cathey, who served with the 38th Infantry on the western frontier from 1866 to 1868. But for a smattering of newspaper accounts and some census and military records, the story of the only woman documented to have been a buffalo soldier—the name given by the Plains Indians to African-American troops—might have disappeared.
It’s known that Cathay Williams was born into slavery in Independence, Missouri, that she was the daughter of an enslaved woman and a free man, and that she served in the military, says Diane Williams, who presents Cathay Williams’s life for the Mississippi Humanities Council’s speakers bureau. She was often sick, according to her military records, and, by Cathay’s own accounting, her fellow soldiers gave her a hard time when it was revealed she was a woman.
Cathay joined with a cousin and someone she called “a particular friend,” probably a boyfriend, says Williams. Neither ever betrayed Cathay or revealed her identity.
But the simplest facts—the correct spelling of her name, her birth date, and the circumstances of her death—may never have been recorded, and no one knows how she managed to fool the army surgeons and her comrades for so long. In telling Cathay’s tale, says Williams, “I’m relying on limited materials,” and “there are discrepancies throughout.”
As a storyteller, Williams highlights people who have worked hard against the odds. In Cathay’s case, she focuses on the soldier’s likely fortitude.
Once freed by Union forces, Cathay became contraband, commandeered by Colonel William Plummer Benton for the 8th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. Like countless freed slaves wholabored for the Union during the war, she went where she was sent. Her duties as a laundress took her as far afield as the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where the 8th participated in General Philip Sheridan’s campaign to make the land a “barren waste,” per General Grant’s orders.
She probably joined the army after the war because “it was simply a better life” than she otherwise might have had, says Williams, and it was a familiar one. Enlisting as a buffalo soldier to protect settlers, garrison forts, and fight in the Indian Wars also meant becoming part of something larger—the westward expansion across the Great Plains and Southwest.
Cathay’s unit was one of six African-American regiments—four infantry, two cavalry—of Regulars authorized for frontier defense in July 1866. The following November, Cathay signed on in St. Louis. Her enlistment papers record her age as twenty-two, and say, “This soldier has black eyes, black hair, black complexion, is 5 feet 9 inches high.”
Back then, there were no physicals, and the doctors “only looked for superficial impairments, and, outside of that, you were fit for duty,” says Williams, adding that “she would have been discovered if she were my height,” which is five feet two.
Soon after enlisting, Cathay contracted smallpox. After she recovered, she followed her regiment to Fort Riley, Kansas, by train. Onward they went to Fort Harker, where they were dogged by cholera. Long marches to Forts Union, Cummings, and Bayard in New Mexico came next, according to historian Phillip Thomas Tucker, who estimates that Cathay covered one thousand miles on foot in her two years in the 38th. Although Cathay moved through hostile territory, there’s no evidence that she ever fought, says Williams.
Cathay’s charade came to an end in October 1868 when “finally I got tired and wanted to get off. I played sick. . . . The post surgeon found out I was a woman,” she told an enterprising reporter, whose interview with her appeared in 1876 in the St. Louis Daily Times. She was discharged under a certificate of disability.
After leaving the military, Cathay moved around New Mexico and Colorado. In 1891, she sought an invalid pension from the federal government—she had spent a year and a half hospitalized in Trinidad, Colorado, and was missing her toes. The Pension Board denied her claim, saying there was no disability, despite discharge papers that described constant illness and “feeble habit.” Why the Pension Board took this approach, given there were other ways they could have dismissed the claim, is unclear, but Williams thinks the military was simply embarrassed that a woman had gotten through enlistment.
When Williams tells the story of Cathay’s life—the details of which start to peter out around the time of the pension claim—the audience’s questions depend on their personal experiences. Veterans in a community college history class wondered about her duties and why she could not get her pension. Children want to know how she disguised herself and what her voice sounded like.
“Some people might have said she was a hero, but that wasn’t necessarily true,” says Williams, who sees a woman who only wanted to be a good soldier, one who proudly claimed to have “carried her musket.”