CDV of Female Union Soldier Frances Hook, Alias Frank

Period-copy CDV of female soldier Frances Hook (1847-1908). Uncredited: n.d., ca 1860s. Ink identified on verso as "Mr. Frank Miller."

Frances Hook, who identified as Private Frank Miller, Frank Henderson, Frank Martin, and Frank Fuller, purportedly served with the 11th, 19th, 33rd, and 90th Illinois Regiments, although enlistment records show no evidence of her aliases. While with the 90th IL, Hook was wounded in the thigh and captured near Florence, AL, in early 1864 and incarcerated at Atlanta. A Confederate doctor tending to Union wounded exposed Frank Miller as a female and she was soon exchanged at Graysville, GA, on February 17, 1864 and subsequently convalesced in Nashville.

Hook was discharged and sent home to Illinois but speculation remains that with nowhere else to go she reenlisted and continued to serve until the end of the war. Hook ultimately married in 1908, and her daughter later applied for a military pension based on her mother’s Civil War military service. Contemporary authors of social history and those focusing in women’s studies have put the number of female soldiers serving in Northern and Southern armies as high as several thousand, but the true identities of only a handful are actually known. Frances Hook, alias Frank Miller, is a legitimate example of a female warrior.
Condition Report: Contrast light, typical of period copy images. Surface soiling. Toning to print. Clipped corners.