Cathay Williams (1850- )

January 30, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Ramona Rand-Caplan

|39th Congress Act Creating the Buffalo Soldier Regiments

Cathay Williams (AKA William Cathay)

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Cathay Williams is the only documented African American woman who served as a soldier in the Regular U.S. Army in the nineteenth century.  Cathay was born a slave around 1850 in Jackson County, Missouri.  In September 1861 Union troops impressed Cathay into the Army to work as a cook and washerwoman for Union Army officers.  She remained with the Army throughout the Civil War serving at various locales including Little Rock, Arkansas; New Orleans and Shreveport in Louisiana; and Savannah and Macon, both in Georgia. In 1864 she briefly served as cook and washerwoman for General Phil Sheridan and his staff in the Shenandoah Valley campaign.

On November 15, 1866 Williams disguised her gender and enlisted as William Cathey, serving in Company A of the 38th Infantry, a newly-formed all-black U.S. Army Regiment, one of its earliest recruits.  Cathay said she joined the Army because “I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends.”

Cathay initially served at Jefferson Barracks outside St. Louis and was later posted at Fort Cummings and Fort Bayard in New Mexico Territory.  Like other black soldiers stationed at remote western outposts after the Civil War, Cathay endured inadequate supplies and inferior weapons.  One of the tallest privates in her company, Cathay concealed her femininity for two years despite numerous Army hospital visits before her true gender was discovered by the Fort Bayard post surgeon.  Cathay was discharged at Fort Bayard on October 14, 1868 on a surgeon’s certificate of disability.

Following her discharge from the Army, Cathay resumed her identity as Cathay Williams and lived in Pueblo, Las Animas, and Trinidad, Colorado, where she was known as Kate.  Cathay was hospitalized circa 1890 for over a year in Trinidad.  In June 1891 Cathay filed a pension application based on medical disability incurred during military service as William Cathey.  The Army rejected her pension claim on February 8, 1892, citing no grounds for a pensionable disability, but did not question her gender identity as William Cathay.  The date of Cathay Williams’ death is unknown.

About the Author

Author Profile

Ramona L. Rand-Caplan is a doctoral student in American Western History at the University of New Mexico. Her published work includes “Aunt Sally: She Rode with Custer” in John P. Hart, ed., Custer & His Times, Book Four (LaGrange Park, IL: Little Big Horn Associates, Inc., 2002). Ms. Rand-Caplan was the Clinton P. Anderson Fellow at the Center for Southwest Research at UNM from 2003-2006, and the Beatrice Chauvenet Fellowship at the CSWR in 2006-2007. Her master’s thesis “The Saga of the Sevilleta” is a detailed history, including oral history interviews recorded with grantee descendants, of the Sevilleta Land Grant in New Mexico from Spanish Colonial times to the present. The Sevilleta is unique among land grants, the only grant whose restored common lands are now a National Wild Life Refuge. Ms. Rand-Caplan has worked as an oral historian for the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum since 2003.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Rand-Caplan, R. (2007, January 30). Cathay Williams (1850- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/williams-cathay-1850/

Source of the Author's Information:

St. Louis Daily Times, St. Louis, MO, January 2, 1876.  “She Fought Nobly: The Story of a Colored Heroine who Served as a Regularly Enlisted Soldier During the Late War”; NARA, Washington, D.C. , U.S. Regular Army: Enlistment papers, William Cathey, November 15, 1866, St. Louis, MO; Certificate of Disability for Discharge, William Cathey, October 14, 1868, Fort Bayard, N.M.; U.S. Army Pension Bureau, Declaration for an Original Invalid Pension, filed June 1891 by Cathay Williams.

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