Animated Rosetta Wakeman, "Pvt. Lyons Wakeman," 153rd New York Infantry

 It has been an honor to give women soldiers of the Civil War a voice through my research. And now, I am excited to be able to give them life through AI. This short video highlights the story of Rosetta Wakeman. I wrote the script myself and included some of her own words from her letters. I made the video with Deep Story by My Heritage using the actual photo of her. I didn't like the voice generated from the website, so I extracted it and used another AI voice found on Narakeet. Consequently, the sound and animation are not perfectly synched. But I tried my best. This voice isn't perfect either, and if I find one I like better, I'll redo the video. This will suffice for now.   If you search my blog, you will find multiple posts I have written about her.

Meet Private Lyons Wakeman

Sarah Rosetta Wakeman Wore a Fake Mustache?

 A reader sent me a link to an auction house that sold a letter written by Sgt. William Henry Austin of the 109th New York Infantry.  He was a childhood friend of Rosetta Wakeman and was a bit surprised to see her in the uniform of a soldier when her regiment, the 153rd New York Infantry, was passing through Alexandria, Virginia.  Austin says her unit was bound for Texas, but they ended up in Louisiana and participated in the ill-fated Red River Campaign.  What I found especially intriguing about Austin's letter is the fact that he observed that she sported "an insipid moustache, highly colored." 

Rosetta's Real Life "Mercy Street" in New Orleans

http://thecivilwarparlor.tumblr.com/

Continuing with the theme of women soldiers and their hospital experiences, this blog post details that of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, whose story has been highly publicized in books, articles, and blogs since Lauren Cook introduced us to the woman warrior in 1994 through her wartime letters in An Uncommon Soldier.

The 5'0" tall, blue-eyed farm girl was financially driven to enlist in the 153rd New York Infantry on August 30th, 1862.  As a "man," she would make more money than she ever would as a woman.  Rosetta sent a portion of her soldier's pay home to Afton, New York in order to help alleviate the debt her family had accrued.  (Uncommon Soldier, p. 9)

In February, 1864, the 153rd was transferred from Washington D.C to Louisiana where they would participate in Major General Nathanial Banks' Red River Campaign.   During the ill-fated venture, Federal troops experienced bad water, bad food and fatigue from hundreds of miles of hard marching in the burning heat and suffocating humidity of Louisiana's subtropical climate.  The stress of dealing with all of these hardships took its toll as soldiers began to succumb to a variety of diseases.  Private Wakeman was one of them.