by Murrel Bland
March is National Women’s History Month and the Wyandotte County Historical Society is sponsoring a special program that will tell stories of women who served in Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.
Diane Eickhoff, an independent author and editor from Kansas City, Missouri, will tell of women who cut their hair, donned men’s clothing and reported for duty.
Other women served as scouts and spies or rode with their husbands and brothers. One of these women was Emma Edmonds, who settled in Ft. Scott after the war. Eickhoff tells how and why these women defied cultural norms of the day.
Eichkoff and her husband Aaron Barnhart are the authors of the book “The Big Divide,” a travel guide to historic and Civil War sites in the Missouri-Kansas border region.
Eickhoff also is the author of the book “Revolutionary Heart,” the story of Clarina Nichols. Nichols was a crusader for women’s rights and lived in the Quindaro community in the mid-1850s.
The program will be presented at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 18, at the George Meyn Community Center at 126th Street and State Avenue in the Wyandotte County Park, Bonner Springs. It will be free and open to the public. The Kansas Humanities Council is sponsoring the program in-part.
The society’s annual awards program also will be presented. Light refreshments will be served.
For more information, telephone 913-573-5002.