Rare 19th Century Tintype, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. Mary Edwards Walker (1832 - 1919) grew up in the upstate, NY city of Oswego, where her abolutionist, unconventional parents taught their seven children to think for themselves and do as they pleased without worrying about conformity. Walker graduated with a medical degree from Syracuse in 1855. She was married to Albert Miller, a Syracuse classmate, in 1856, wearing a dress coat over trousers. Walker never took her husband's name, but her independent practice in Rome, NY suffered from the fact that women doctors were considered inferior throughout mid-19th century America. Two years after the vows were exchanged, Walker was granted a divorce in 1860 in Iowa. It wasn't until after the Civil War, in 1869, that NY granted the same divorce decree.Walker spoke at the National Dress Reform Association Convention in 1860 and was elected a vice president of the board. She was denied enrollment to the Army as a doctor; then volunteered to be acting assistant surgeon to Dr. J.N. Green at the Indiana Hospital just beyond the U.S. Patent Office in DC. In her role as surgeon, Walker observed that the post-surgical death rate among amputees was as high as 60-80%. She gave counsel to soldiers to keep their limbs, albeit their obvious disfigurements. By 1863, Walker was at the Chickamauga campaign in Tennessee, where she given an appointment as Assistant Surgeon, 52nd Ohio Infantry. She wore a version of the male uniform of blue trousers and jacket in the field, and was present at battles including Warrenton, Fredericksburg, Bull Run, Chickamauga, Atlanta and Chattanooga. It was in this capacity that she was taken prisoner by Confederate forces and sent to Richmond, Virginia's Castle Thunder. With food and good water in short supply, Walker suffered permanent atrophy to her musculature. After her freedom, Walker served as head of surgery at a women's hospital in Louisville, then Head of Orphanage, Clarkesville , Tennessee. At her discharge in 1865, William Tecumsah Sherman and others referred her for the Medal of Honor. She is still the only woman every to have been conferred this level of distinction. After the war, Walker became President, the National Dress Reform Association in 1866; that same year she, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone created the Women's Suffrage Assn. As a trousers wearing, suffrage-supporting feminist, she started to live with attorney Belva Lockwood, in this same period of time.Dr. Walker was arrested for being a "cross dresser," a feminist; yet she decried the idea that women "needed" an equal rights amendment, which alienated her from her fellow suffragettes. In the decades post-Reconstruction and during the height of fighting in World War I, Woodrow Wilson's Congress stripped Walker of the medal that meant so much to her, but Walker refused to remove it from her person and continued to wear it every day until she died. Congress' rationale was that the Medal should only have been given to soldiers who were active combatants. President Jimmy Carter reinstated Walker as an honorable recipient posthumously, in 1977. This rare image shows Walker seated on the left, together with a standing woman, and a seated male Union solider. The image dates to 1860-1862. None. 1860-1862. {Approximate dimensions: 3 1/8" x 2 1/2, the tintype; the case 3 5/8 H. X 3 5/8 W. x 5/8" D.} From a Bay Area private collection. Condition: Good, the tintype with typical minor abrasions and scatching, lower left with slightly-upturned corner. The case with light wear to exterior.