Documenting a civilian

[crabby]

No, I'm the postman at Westville. I wear my legs to nubs running around town trying to find people when they have moved from their assigned housing to some other random location.

Joe,

I'll have to address some more of those handbills, just in case you don't have enough mail to keep you busy.

Crabby

[PogueMahone]

I'll find out what the bulk rate is for you ...

[Elaine Kessinger]

Gents- Thank you for giving *some* response. I started researching this impression at the request of a friend. I wound my way through both of those sources, as well as many online sites, fora, blogs, enough googlebooks to make my head swim, when I was trying to understand things like the difference between the duties of a ward matron and the duties of a female nurse, and the different kinds of hospitals and how women were employeed in each. I'm confident enough that the impression is logical for the event scenerio.. what I was hoping for advice on was when this woman gets stopped and asked for ID and her business, what papers would she present. The local citizenry presents a loyalty oath and a pass from the provost.. the military gents present an oath (maybe) and a pass from their CO to be detached from their group... what should this woman who falls into neither catagory firmly present?

[Pvt Schnapps]

See my earlier post -- she should have a certificate from Miss Dix countersigned by the local Medical Director. That should work as basic ID, though in a sensitive place like Harper's Ferry she might also need a pass from the local provost.

[David Fox]

Well, if I may respectfully add a touch more of testosterone to this pleasantly estrogen-rich thread, one of Mary Todd Lincoln's Rebel half-sisters, to Lincoln's mortification, used a pass he, himself, issued to her to smuggle south across the lines a new uniform for General Lee (!) and a quantity of quinine, if I remember aright. Again, if memory serves, Lincoln sometimes issued passes to his wife's Confederate-leaning female Kentucky relatives in the form of telegrams. He waived a loyalty oath for the grieving Confederate widow, Emilie Todd Helm. One wonders how these telegram-passes were exemplified on the receiving end, a problem strangely modern as the law presently wrestles with the evidential validity of fax and e-mail generated documents.