Camp of 31st Pennsylvania Infantry near Washington, D.C..(1862?)

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g07000/3g07900/3g07983v.jpg

SUMMARY
Woman with sleeves rolled up holding basket, posed in front of tent with a soldier (possibly her husband) and three children, other soldiers in the background.

CALL NUMBER
LOT 4172-C
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This is quite a famous photo, and it shows a wife or lady who is in a camp doing laundry with her 3 kids.  

In posting an article on our unit's webpage about roles for our civlians, one idea was a laundress and Vickie Wendel had done an article called "Washer Women" in the August 1999 CWTI magazine.  She also referenced this image.

One of our ladies in our unit noticed the children and was suprised they were in the military setting.  

I realize this is merely a glimpse at a moment in time.  It represents that moment and not necessarily a PEC action.

Just curious what others take from this image?

I have always admired his meat saw.

Sandy, my wife, has talked about doing this impression. So far, I have been successful in talking her out of it. I know full well who is going to get stuck with hauling all the water, not to mention all the various equipment.  

I think the whole lot of them got "slickened" up to get into an image. They all look too clean.

as a mother, i too would make sure my children were in their best to take a pic!

they are definitely her children, you can see the likeness in the 2 older (cant tell with the baby). it looks to me like the lady is thinking "hurry up so i can get back to work" i feel for her though if she really were stuck in camp with the men, that would be hard.

Oh, she wasn't stuck too long. Through a general order issued in August of 1862, civilians were no longer permitted in military camps. Laundresses got their own "space," in camp, like sutlers. I think, if memory serves me, it was General Order 153. I always get that one and the one that limited batallion baggage and tentage mixed up. The were both issued around the same time. I'm sure both were issued before Antetiam and after 2nd Manassas.

i just cant imagine being a female in a camp full of men... even for a few weeks!!

Weeellll now...

     

lol.. no offense to men, of course. but you know... after a few weeks, men can... well...  after awhile she probably felt like a piece of meat being stared at in the front window of a chinese restaurant!

Or she could us it to her "advantage".  From the 1999 article:
Regulations did state that no “woman of bad character will be allowed to follow the army,” and most laundresses seemed respectable enough. There were a few, however, who occasionally earned extra money through methods less innocent than washing socks. A private in the 2d Minnesota Infantry charged that some of the laundry attendants in his regiment “make lots of money nature’s way. One of them had a bill today against a soldier for forty dollars.” Such improper behavior was grounds for dismissal.

Also according to the article:
Even when other women or excess personnel were banned, the washer women traveled with their customers, thanks to their official status. On December 9, 1862, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued Special Field Orders No. 18 from his headquarters in the field near Oxford, Mississippi. This act specifically excluded women and children from being with the army, and directed wing commanders to see that these civilians were sent to Holly Springs or some point north of that place.” It further ordered “Negro women and children and unemployed men” to be sent to Grand Junction, Tennessee. Grant made clear however, that the order was “not intended to exclude authorized laundresses, hospital nurses, or officers’ servants” from accompanying the army.

Similarly, while organizing an expedition in Florida in early 1864, Union Major General Quincy Adams Gilimore ordered participating units to leave behind all excess baggage, presumably to increase mobility. On February 4 he informed Brigadier General Truman Seymour, “You will see that no females accompany your command, and will give strict orders that none shall follow except regularly appointed laundresses, who will be allowed to accompany the baggage of their respective commands.”

" leave behind all excess baggage"
"You will see that no females"

hmmm... how many of the men in camps actually thought that the females were excess baggage? that cracks me up...

O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVII/1 [S# 24]
DECEMBER 20, 1862-JANUARY 3, 1863.--Operations against Vicksburg, Miss.
No. 1.--Reports of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, U. S. Army, commanding Expedition, of operations December 12, 1862-January 4, 1863, with instructions from Major-General Grant,(*) etc.

GENERAL ORDERS No. 8.
HDQRS. RIGHT WING, 13TH ARMY CORPS,
Memphis, Tenn., December 18, 1862.
I. The expedition now fitting out is purely of a military character, and the interests involved are too important to be mixed up with personal and private business. No citizen, male or female, will be allowed to accompany it, unless employed as part of a crew, or as a servant to the transports; female chambermaids to boats and nurses to sick alone will be allowed, unless the wives of captains or pilots actually belonging to boats. No laundress, officers' or solders' wives must pass below Helena.