My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier

Lynda Durrant

Feb 2006 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

Jennie Hodgers dressed as a boy for the first time in order to help support her impoverished Irish family with a shepherd’s wages. Then her arrival in America confirmed her belief that the world offers better opportunities to young men than to young women. So Jennie maintained her outward identity as Albert Cashier, serving as a grocery clerk in Queens, New York; as a farmhand in Ohio; and as a recruit in the 95th Illinois Infantry during the Civil War. Not only did she survive three years in combat with her true identity undiscovered, she chose to continue living as Albert for nearly all of her life.

Combining careful research with vivid insight, Lynda Durrant portrays Albert Cashier as a soldier who served his adopted country and his comrades with loyalty and heroism, and Jennie Hodgers as a woman of a woman of astonishing strength, courage, and adaptability—a woman sometimes at war with her own secrets. Author’s note, bibliography.

Ratings and reviews

I know lots of folks that now live comfortably as a man, when they started out life as a female. Now it is easier now with testosterone and surgery, but I am sure there were a few lucky "female to male" (FTM) transgender people, even back then could cross the gender line and live how they felt they should live. I am pretty sure Albert Cashier was transgender, a "female to male transsexual" as we would call him now. Way to go Albert!

The fact that HE made pants out of dresses while in the hospital shows how much his identity mattered to him. The fact that the author chose to use his birth name and gender is a slur and erasure of a trans life lived.

About the author

Lynda Durrant is the author of five well-received historical novels for Clarion, several of which have been named to state children’s choice awards lists. She lives in Bath, Ohio, with her family and a horse named Irish.