Mary Coppage

Pension File: 1128908, 863570
P.O.: Naples, Illinois
Service: regimental nurse in the 129th Illinois
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

One of the issues I keep finding in the pension files is the distinction between employment and volunteering.  It seems rather clear cut, but then you come across the file of a woman who is listed on the muster roll like a soldier or employee, but who says she volunteered and never drew any pay.  So, was she an employee, or a volunteer?
Does that make sense?
Anyway, if you hadn't already guessed, Mary Coppage presents rather the same complicated question in her file.  Her husband, Joseph W. Coppage, was a captain in the 129th (he was also apparently a veteran of the War with Mexico).  Coppage stayed with the regiment from January, 1863 to February, 1864, traveling with them to Fountain Head, South Tunnel, Gallatin, and Nashville, Tennessee.  The exact nature of the service though is open for debate--at least to the Bureau.  When Coppage applied in 1892, she submitted the affidavit of the surgeon who employed her, proving six months service and competent authority in one go, but then Bureau official who read her application made a note: if it were up to him, he would accept Coppage's application, but according to the affidavits she was "requested" to serve rather than employed, without the expectation of payment.  So, an employee or a volunteer?  The Bureau evidently decided she was an employee, because she was awarded a pension and continued to draw it until her death in 1902.  But the question remains: where is the line between volunteer and employee?  Sometimes I don't think even these women knew quite what they were.  And that's in part what makes this fascinating.  The war is the beginning of a transition, women making their way into professional medicine.  Even thirty years later these women, and the country, are still in the midst of that transition, and they are all so confused.
Glad I'm not the only one.