The first female recipient of the United States Medal of Honor provides a
collector her signature.
Signature: "
Mary E. Walker, M.D./A.A. Surgeon, U.S.A./in War of 1861-5./[three dashes]",
1p, 6¼x8½. Beneath the signature, the person who obtained the autograph has typed a
description of Walker, who was
"a spectator at the trial of Mrs. Melbar, who was being
tried for the murder of her five year old son." The collector continues:
"After I asked for
the autograph, a photographer asked permission posing in front of the building for him.
Under her name she put three little dashes and told me that the represented the red,
white and blue." In 1865, President Andrew Johnson presented Dr. Mary Edwards Walker a
Medal of Honor for her work with the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war,
Walker, an advocate of women's rights, temperance, and dress reform, became a controversial
writer and lecturer. In 1917, at the height of the woman suffrage movement, a federal review
board revoked the 85-year-old Walker's Medal of Honor, claiming she had never actually
served in the Army. Walker refused to return the Medal, proudly wearing it until her death in
1919. In 1977, her Medal of Honor was restored by President Carter. Lightly creased. Fine
condition.
