Begun as a lark, the all-girl Rhea County Spartans soon attracted the attention of unamused Union officers.

By Charles Rice

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"I must tell you about a candy stew that they had at Uncle Frank's last night," young Mary Paine of Rhea County, Tennessee, wrote to her Confederate-soldier brother in January 1863. "Miss Jennie and Manurva had been up to town on a visit and came back there and asked if they might have one there. She told them she did not care if Uncle Frank was willing [,] so they waited till he came home and begged him until he agreed that they might have one there. So they went on home and came back that night with several other girls and had a fine time they say. But I will tell you who was there and then you can guess what a time they had. There was Miss Jennie, Manurva, Scrap, Ann Gillespie, Jane Locke, Molly Kelly, and Isabel Cunnyngham. [Colonel Onslow] Bean was the only gentleman there."

Unbelievable as it might seem, most of these carefree young ladies would one day be "captured" by the Union Army and find themselves held as full-fledged prisoners of war. The story of the adventuresome Rhea County girls and the "cavalry company" they formed is an undeservedly forgotten incident of the Civil War.

The Rhea County Girls' Company was created in the summer of 1862 through a combination of boredom and the desire to be a part of the war for Southern independence. Almost all of the "sidesaddle soldiers" had fathers or brothers in the Confederate military, and the young ladies evidently felt frustrated because their gender prevented them from enlisting. Since they could not actually join the Confederate Army, they did the next best thing: They created an army of their own.

Rhea County, located on the northern bank of the Tennessee River in east Tennessee, was one of the most pro-Confederate counties in the politically divided mountain region. Rhea County provided seven companies for the Southern army against only one for the Union–something of a record for east Tennessee. When their fathers and brothers marched off to war, the young ladies refused to be left out. Instead, the all-girl company came into existence. Mary McDonald, one of the oldest of the group, was duly elected captain. Caroline McDonald, evidently her sister-in-law, became first lieutenant. Anne Paine was picked for second lieutenant, while Rhoda Tennessee Thomison completed the commissioned list as third lieutenant.

Named as noncommissioned officers were Jane Keith, first sergeant; Rachel Howard, second sergeant; Sallie Mitchell, third sergeant; and Minerva Tucker, fourth sergeant. The girls elected no corporals, and the remaining members of the company had to be content with the humble rank of private. These included Barbara Allen, Josephine Allen, Martha Bell, Mary Crawford, Kate Dunwoody, Martha Early, Ann Gillespie, Jennie Hoyal, Kate Hoyal, Maggie Keith, Jane Locke, Louisa McDonald, Mary Ann McDonald, Sidney McDonald, Mary Paine, Mary Robinson, Sarah Rudd and Margaret Sykes. Like their male counterparts, the ladies chose for themselves an appropriate martial name–the Rhea County Spartans. All the young women came from prominent local families. The average age was 18, although the 1860 U.S. census lists Mary McDonald and Caroline McDonald as both being 25, which would have made them about 27 when the company was formed.

At first, the Rhea County Spartans contented themselves with simply visiting their soldier sweethearts and relatives among the three companies stationed in the area, presenting them with useful gifts of food and clothing. In mid-1863, however, Union troops entered the area, and the girls' activities necessarily became more circumspect. The lady soldiers continued to hold clandestine meetings, if only to keep up their spirits and to exchange news of the war. Rural churches in the Washington area were their most common rendezvous.

Almost certainly, the ladies must have engaged in at least a small amount of spying and information-gathering for the Confederate Army. What had started out as a lark became decidedly more serious.

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