Mrs. Amanda Purcell

Article taken from The Delphos Daily Herald, January 12, 1899

She Sent A Substitute to the War

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Mrs. Amanda Purcell, of Portsmouth, Ohio, who died three years ago, aged 73, was the only woman who ever hired a substitute and sent him to the war when there was no claim upon her whatever to do so. Her husband had died in 1856, and when the civil war came on her sons were small boys. She believed, however, that it was her duty to contribute to her county's cause the best she could. She therefore paid $800 to a man to go to war, with the provision that she was never to know his name or his fate.