Kady Southwell Brownell
(1843-1915)
Kady Southwell was born around 1843 in South Africa to the French wife of Colonel George Southwell, a Scotsman in the British army, supposedly on a battlefield on the Eastern Cape. According to the lore, not long after her birth, Kady’s mother died and the infant was taken in by family friends, the McKenzies, who brought her to Rhode Island. She met her husband, Robert Brownell, while working at a mill in Central Falls, Rhode Island. When the American Civil War began, Robert enlisted and Kady insisted on serving with him. She is one of a few women who participated in combat during the Civil War, at Bull Run (Sharpsburg) and New Bern. Some said that she was an expert shot, known for quickness and accuracy, and handled a sword as well as any man could. After the war, pursuing an acting career, Kady moved to New York where she became a familiar figure in the city’s annual Decoration Day parade, wearing her impressive Zouave costume complete with war souvenirs and sword. She managed to join the Grand Army of the Republic and also secured a Union veteran pension of $8 per month in 1884. Kady Brownell’s story was the stuff of legend even during her lifetime, and she helped to perpetuate her fame through her tableaux at GAR entertainments and public appearances. Despite this, she died impoverished in a New York relief hospital on January 15, 1915. Her husband solicited money from friends for her NBG memorial.
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C. Morgan Grefe, PhD, Executive Director, Rhode Island Historical Society
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Kady Southwell Brownell (1843-1915)
Many Civil War enthusiasts are familiar with the legend of Kady Brownell. This legend begins with her birth to the French wife of Colonel George Southwell, a Scotsman in the British army, on a battlefield on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. According to the lore, not long after her birth, Kady’s mother died, and the infant was taken in by family friends, the McKenzies, who brought her to Rhode Island.
Little is known of Kady’s early life in Rhode Island. At some point after arriving in America, she secured a job in a mill, working up to the position of weaver in a Central Falls, Rhode Island factory where she met and fell in love with millwright Robert Brownell. According to the popular legend, eighteen-year-old Kady and Robert married in 1861, just days before the Civil War broke out. Robert was previously married. Not long after they wed, the call went out for ninety-day volunteers to suppress the Southern rebellion. Robert, who was in a militia club called the Mechanics Rifles, immediately joined the First Rhode Island Volunteers.
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The popular version of Brownell’s story is that she was so distraught at the prospect of losing her new husband to the Union Army that she attempted to board the transport ship with his regiment. Robert forcibly removed Kady chiding her that, “war was no place for a lady,” according to a newspaper account written some years later. Plucky Kady, however, would not be deterred. She pleaded with Rhode Island Governor Sprague for permission to accompany her husband and his regiment to war. Her wish granted, Kady followed Robert to Virginia, where she saw action in the First Battle of Bull Run. In the version of this story penned by Frank Moore in his 1866 Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice, Kady was ever the intrepid and spunky heroine. Robert Brownell was severely wounded at Bull Run, was discharged after his three-month enlistment was up, and he and Kady headed back to Rhode Island,
Robert re-enlisted some weeks later in the Fifth Rhode Island Regiment led by Rhode Island’s most famous Civil War officer, Brigadier General Ambrose Burnside. The couple left Rhode Island as the regiment traveled to the Neuse River during a Union advance toward New Bern, North Carolina. Here Kady saw action. Some said that she was an expert shot, known for quickness and accuracy, and handled a sword as well as any man could. At the Battle of New Bern in mid-March 1862 Kady may have carried the regimental colors but later the colors disappointingly were handed to another soldier. She, in fact, saved men’s lives and was at the ready when word came that Robert had fallen in the battle. She quickly assumed a more culturally proper role of the time as a wife and vivandière, caring for him and tending to other wounded men.
After the Battle of New Bern, Robert Brownell convalesced for some months; he and Kady never served in the army again. In the postwar years, after a brief stay in Rhode Island, they moved to Connecticut and spent their time between the Nutmeg State and New York City. Robert apparently held a variety of jobs through the years: carpenter, millwright, agent, building custodian and perhaps a maker or seller of tobacco and cigars.
Kady, however, seized the opportunity to make something of her experiences at the front. In the 1870s the Bridgeport City Directory listed her as an “amateur actress.” Bartlett notes that Brownell presented herself onstage as the valiant heroine of the Moore sketch. Her best-known performance was a tableau entitled, "Our Female Volunteer," which highlighted her war experiences. Bartlett believes that the famous photograph of Kady in her Zouave uniform is probably from this time, and that she never actually wore such an outfit during the conflict.
In September of 1870, Kady was inducted into the Elias Howe, Jr. Post #3 of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) in Bridgeport, Connecticut. From that moment, Kady became legendary as “the only woman ever to join the GAR.” And many male members of the organization were apparently not at all happy about her membership. In 1882, Kady Brownell sought additional, formal recognition of her role in the Civil War: she applied for a pension through a Special Act of Congress. Congress then launched an extensive inquiry into her service and in 1884 she received a government pension of $8 per month.
By the turn of the century, the Brownells were living in New York City. Kady worked for the city’s Park Service in Central Park and then as the custodian for the Morris-Jumel Mansion once owned by Rhode Island born Eliza Jumal, former wife of Aaron Burr. New York newspapers reported that Kady was a familiar figure in the city’s annual Decoration Day parade wearing her impressive Zouave costume, complete with war souvenirs and sword.
Kady Brownell’s story was certainly the stuff of legend during her lifetime, and she helped to perpetuate her fame through her tableaux at GAR entertainments and with public appearances in parades. One posed carte de visite image accompanies this essay; others exist of a uniformed Kady crouched and crawling, as if in battle. At the turn of the century, poet Clinton Scollard captured Brownell’s romantic story in a dramatic ballad, "The Daughter of the Regiment."
Despite Kady Brownell’s celebrated life, she died impoverished in the Women’s Relief Hospital in Oxford, New York on January 14, 1915. Robert and family friends pooled their resources and purchased a plot and gravestone in Providence’s North Burial Ground for Kady.
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C. Mogran Grefe, PhD, Executive Director, Rhode Island Historical Society
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Bibliography and Further Reading
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Sara L. Bartlett, “Kady Brownell, A Rhode Island Legend,” unpublished paper in Rhode Island Historical Society Collection, MSS CT275.B791B3.
Frank Moore, Women of the War, Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton & Co., 1866), 55-63.
“Kady Brownell, Civil War Heroine Fighting for Life,” New York Times, February 16, 1913 and, “A Rhode Island “Vivandiere” in the New York Parade,” Providence Journal, June 1, 1905.
Clinton Scollard and Wallace Rice, Ballads of Valor and Victory being Stories in Song from the Annals of America (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co, 1903), 87-88. First published in 1897 by the Perry Mason Company.
Newspaper clipping, undated, reprinted from the “N.Y. Evening Sun.” [ in handwriting,:“probably from the Narragansett Times, Wakefield, RI, ca. 1902—1912.”] RIHS Vertical File, “Kady Brownell,” MSS B882 K
