Words and Images by Jenny Lynn Davis
The Carl Elliott Regional Library – Jasper Public Library hosted a full house on Thursday, April 10, as acclaimed storyteller Dolores Hydock presented Soldiers in Hoop Skirts: Nurses, Spies, and Other Fighting Women of the Civil War. The event was part of the library’s adult programming series and funded through the Alabama Humanities Alliance’s Road Scholars program.
Known for her engaging performances, Hydock took the audience beyond battlefield statistics and strategy to focus on the women whose courage shaped the war in less visible but no less vital ways. “I like to find the real people tucked inside history,” she said as she opened the evening. “The human stories hidden in the facts.”
Over the course of the program, Hydock introduced attendees to a cast of remarkable women who defied expectations and played essential roles during the Civil War. She began with Louisa May Alcott, widely known for authoring Little Women but less recognized for her brief service as a nurse in a Union hospital. Hydock read excerpts from Alcott’s journals that described long, chaotic days tending to the wounded and her eventual collapse from typhoid fever.
From there, the spotlight shifted to women whose names rarely make it into textbooks. Hydock shared the story of Susie King Taylor, an African American woman who was born enslaved, escaped to Union territory, and eventually worked as a nurse and teacher. Taylor later became the only black woman known to publish a memoir of her Civil War experiences.
Hydock also shared about Belle Boyd, the so-called “Siren of the Shenandoah,” who charmed her way into the confidence of Union officers, then rode through the night to deliver intelligence to Confederate forces.
Hydock closed with the story of the Nancy Harts Militia of LaGrange, Georgia. This all-female group negotiated directly with Union raiders to protect their town from destruction in the final days of the war. WL
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