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United States of America
Civil War Women’s GAR Auxiliary – Woman’s Relief Corps
1886 Bronze Medal
29mm x 29mm (11.73 grams)
WOMANS RELIEF CORPS 1883, Stars around people shaking hands, woman and child below, flags on either side, eagle left, quiver right.
PATENTED MAY 4. AND SEPT. 28, 1886.
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 The Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC) is a charitable organization in the United States, originally founded as the official women’s auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) in 1883. The organization was designed to assist the GAR, promote and help run Memorial Day, petition the federal government for nurses pensions, and promote patriotic education. Today, it is largely dedicated to historical preservation of research and official documentation related to the WRC and GAR.
The WRC expresses that among other tenets, a primary purpose is to perpetuate the memory of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ advocacy organization for Union Army soldiers during the American Civil War. The WRC is the GAR’s only legally recognized auxiliary and was organized at the specific request of the GAR. A formal Charter was drawn on July 25 and 26, 1883 in Denver, Colorado. It was subsequently incorporated by Public Act of the 87th Congress on September 7, 1962. The first elected National President of the organization was E. Florence Barker.
The WRC is one of the many women’s organizations that were founded after the American Civil War. In 1879, a group of Massachusetts women started a “secret” organization and its members were to be women who were loyal to the North during the American Civil War.
From 1879, the primary criterium for eligibility to become a member of the WRC was loyalty to the Union cause, and membership was not necessarily restricted to residents of Union states. There were also many chapters across the country that had African-American women as members, though it is difficult to identify many of these women since WRC records do not often specify the racial backgrounds of its members. One notable African-American WRC member was Susie Taylor, who helped organize Corps 67 in Boston, Massachusetts in 1886, and over the next twelve years served as its secretary, treasurer, and president.
Being the official auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, the WRC could not just operate as it wished or do whatever it pleased. The founding members of the WRC had to write rules and regulations that the GAR would approve of and also ran along similar lines of what the GAR was doing. The Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Woman’s Relief Corps stipulated three main objectives. The third of these objectives was to “maintain true allegiance to the United States of America” and teach patriotism and “love of country.”
The numbers of state and territory departments and posts changed regularly from year to year. In 1892, the WRC was made up of 45 departments, provisional departments, and detached corps of various territories and states. There was a combined total of 2,797 corps (chapters) across the country. In 1892, the WRC also had 98,209 members.
Early on in the creation of the WRC, Memorial Day was used to teach patriotism and nationalism to children of all ages across the North (there was an effort in the South, but there was a great deal of resistance). The members of the Woman’s Relief Corps with the assistance of children would make floral wreaths and place them alongside American Flags at the graves of Union veterans and nurses who died during and since the Civil War.
The members of the GAR and WRC viewed Memorial Day as a holy day, but by 1915, the organizations were combating the view that Memorial Day was now a holiday and the memory of the Civil War began to dwindle.
National presidents
- E. Florence Barker, 1st
- Kate Brownlee Sherwood, 2nd
- Sarah E. Fuller
- Elizabeth D’Arcy Kinne
- Emma Stark Hampton
- Charity Rusk Craig
- Annie Turner Wittenmyer
- Mary Sears McHenry
- Susan Augusta Pike Sanders
- Margaret Ray Wickens
- Sarah C. Mink
- Emma Gilson Wallace
- Lizabeth A. Turner
- Agnes Hitt
- Sarah J. Martin
- Flo Jamison Miller
- Harriet J. Bodge
- Mary L. Carr
- Calista Robinson Jones
- Lodusky J. Taylor
- Sarah D. Winans
- Fanny E. Minot
- Abbie A. Adams
- Carrie R. Read
- Kate E. Jones
- Mary C Gilman
- Jennie Iowa Berry
- Belle C Harris
- Michelle Colburn National President 2016-2018
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