Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Legendary individuals aren't usually born as legends. They work hard
Speaker 1: and accomplish great things during their lifetime. In other words,
Speaker 1: legends are made. But while some might spend their lives
Speaker 1: earning their legendary status, others find loopholes workarounds to cement
Speaker 1: their place in history. People. Sarah Emma Edmunds was born
Speaker 1: Sarah Edmond in New Brunswick, Canada, in the winter of
Speaker 1: eighteen forty one. She lived on a farm with her parents,
Speaker 1: multiple sisters, and one brother. Apparently, her father had wanted
Speaker 1: another boy to help with the farm, and so Sarah
Speaker 1: often bore the brunt of his abuse simply for being
Speaker 1: born a girl. She passed the time by reading stories
Speaker 1: of fantasy and adventure, like those of Fanny Campbell, the
Speaker 1: female pirate captain. Fanny was a fictional character who had
Speaker 1: set sail during the American Revolution to save her fiancee
Speaker 1: and wound up becoming the captain of a pirate ship.
Speaker 1: These stories swirled around in Sarah's head as an escape
Speaker 1: from her daily life, but they also got her thinking
Speaker 1: there must be something better out there away from her father,
Speaker 1: and so when she was fifteen years old, she left
Speaker 1: home with her mother's help, partly to get as far
Speaker 1: from her father as possible and also because she was
Speaker 1: set to be married soon. She then changed her last
Speaker 1: name to Edmunds and never looked back. Her dad eventually
Speaker 1: trapped her down and she had to flee once more
Speaker 1: to sky. Ing herself as a boy named Franklin Thompson,
Speaker 1: she made her way straightside to Connecticut, where her alter
Speaker 1: ego helped her land a job as a door to
Speaker 1: door Bible salesman. But she never forgot about Fanny Campbell,
Speaker 1: who defied the odds and took on men in male
Speaker 1: dominated fields. Sarah already dressed like a man to make
Speaker 1: a life for herself on her own, so when the
Speaker 1: Civil War broke out in eighteen sixty one, Sarah saw
Speaker 1: her chance to be more than what had been planned
Speaker 1: for her. She had been traveling through Michigan selling bibles.
Speaker 1: When she enlisted with the Union Army there as Franklin
Speaker 1: Flint Thompson, she was eager to support her adopted country
Speaker 1: against the South. Sarah, as Franklin, took on a number
Speaker 1: of duties during the war as part of the Second
Speaker 1: Michigan Infantry. She helped wounded soldiers, worked as a mail carrier,
Speaker 1: and even fought at the siege of Yorktown in Virginia.
Speaker 1: Her loyalty and grace under pressure soon earned her a
Speaker 1: way to win the war from the inside. She was
Speaker 1: made a spy for the Union. According to Sarah's memoirs,
Speaker 1: she donned numerous disguises and identities to slip behind enemy
Speaker 1: lines undetected. In one scenario, she dyed her skin black
Speaker 1: using silver nitrate and wore a wig so that she
Speaker 1: looked like a black man. On another occasion, while disguised
Speaker 1: as a black laundress, she stole several papers that had
Speaker 1: fallen out of an officer's jacket and smuggled them to
Speaker 1: her superiors. She also pretended to be an Irish peddler
Speaker 1: named bridget O'Shea who sold various soaps and other goods
Speaker 1: to Confederate soldiers, hoping to learn more about their plans. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: her life as a spy was cut unceremoniously short. After
Speaker 1: sustaining a fall from her mule while delivering mail, followed
Speaker 1: by a bout of malaria, Sarah was told to visit
Speaker 1: a Union hospital. There was just one problem with that.
Speaker 1: Any doctor who examined her would realize she wasn't a
Speaker 1: man named Frank Thompson, but she was in fact a woman.
Speaker 1: So instead she checked herself into a private facility and recuperated.
Speaker 1: But during that time, Frank Thompson was labor a deserter.
Speaker 1: Posters were put up, and Sarah realized that her other
Speaker 1: identity was now a wanted man. Rather than go back
Speaker 1: and face military action for desertion from her post, she
Speaker 1: traveled to Washington, d C. Where she enlisted as a
Speaker 1: female nurse under the name Sarah Edmonds. She published an
Speaker 1: account of her time with a second Michigan infantry, as
Speaker 1: well as her brief stint as a spy in a
Speaker 1: memoir titled The Female Spy of the Union Army. But
Speaker 1: barely twenty years after its publication, people started to question
Speaker 1: the book's veracity. A reporter once asked her if her
Speaker 1: book could be considered authentic, to which Sarah replied not
Speaker 1: strictly so. In fact, she admitted that much of what
Speaker 1: she had written was fiction. Ever since then, historians have
Speaker 1: picked apart her story, suggesting that even though she served
Speaker 1: in the military, she probably was never a spy. There
Speaker 1: were no records of Frank Thompson mentioned in any surviving
Speaker 1: rosters or memos, and according to the men she served with,
Speaker 1: her real identity was well known to them by the
Speaker 1: end of the war. Then they said that she was
Speaker 1: a great soldier. So was she really a spy? The
Speaker 1: only people who know for sure are long gone by now.
Speaker 1: But Sarah Edmunds did contribute quite a lot to the
Speaker 1: Union effort during the war. She might not have been
Speaker 1: a legend, but she certainly was a hero, just one
Speaker 1: who might have embellished a bit on her resume. May
Speaker 1: could hear the children long before she could see them.
Speaker 1: As her mule climbed the last hill on the Appalachian
Speaker 1: Mountain trail. Shrieks and laughter could be heard from the
Speaker 1: little one room schoolhouse just beyond the trees. As she
Speaker 1: rounded the corner, the children rushed to greet May and
Speaker 1: her mule, shouting to the others to hurry up. If
Speaker 1: they didn't come soon, they would miss the book woman.
Speaker 1: The nineteen twenty nine stock market crash plunged the whole
Speaker 1: of America into a deep depression, with widespread poverty becoming
Speaker 1: a fact of daily life. One of the hardest hit
Speaker 1: areas was the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky. To fight
Speaker 1: back against the depression and provide work for Americans, President
Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced a series of federal work programs
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, called the New Deal. And already
Speaker 1: lacking the modern highways, electricity, and telephones of the rest
Speaker 1: of the nation, Eastern Kentucky became a prime target for
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's ambitious new project. FDR's Works Progress Administration, or WPA,
Speaker 1: soon descended on Eastern Kentucky, putting men to work building
Speaker 1: roads and bridges. But the folks of Appalachia weren't just
Speaker 1: hungry for infrastructure. They craved knowledge. You see, nearly a
Speaker 1: third of Eastern Kentuckians could not read at this time,
Speaker 1: and with many of them out of work, they saw
Speaker 1: education as a way out of poverty. Their only problem
Speaker 1: living in rural Appalachia, access to books wasn't exactly easy,
Speaker 1: it sounded like the perfect job for the book women.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen thirteen, a woman named May Stafford had
Speaker 1: tried to start a program bringing books to far off
Speaker 1: hills and haulers on horseback, but had to stop after
Speaker 1: she ran out of funding. Now in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: with the backing of FDR's new deal, she was back
Speaker 1: in the saddle. The pack horse library program was ready
Speaker 1: to ride again. The idea was simple. Each county in
Speaker 1: eastern Kentucky would establish a library with donated books. Twice
Speaker 1: a month, an army of women riding mules and horses
Speaker 1: would fill their saddle bags with texts and take them
Speaker 1: out to the mountains, circulating books and magazines to the
Speaker 1: furthest rural communities. This was easier said than done. Of course,
Speaker 1: the government would pay for the writers, but nothing else.
Speaker 1: This meant communities had to find way to buy or
Speaker 1: rent mules, horses, and books. With no roads in many
Speaker 1: parts of the mountains, pack horse librarians were forced to
Speaker 1: ride through mountain trails and creek beds. They had to
Speaker 1: travel nearly one hundred minth miles a week through rain
Speaker 1: and snow, sometimes arriving home with their feet frozen to
Speaker 1: the stirrups. When one woman's mule died mid ride, she
Speaker 1: had to hike the rest of her routes herself. Not
Speaker 1: to mention, these writers faced constant threats from copperhead snakes, bears,
Speaker 1: mountain lions, and suspicious neighbors. Despite the early challenges, the
Speaker 1: Packhorse Library Program was an instant hit. People loved the books,
Speaker 1: whether they were practical guides to quilting or canning, beautiful
Speaker 1: books of poetry, or fanciful adventure novels set in far
Speaker 1: off lands. By nineteen thirty seven, the program served over
Speaker 1: fifty thousand families and nearly two hundred public schools. The
Speaker 1: most popular books in circulation were novels by Mark Twain
Speaker 1: and Daniel Dafoe, with beautifully drawn illustrations. It wasn't uncommon
Speaker 1: for families to read them together, with the children helping
Speaker 1: their parents learn to read. By the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: as the war breaking out in Europe led to an
Speaker 1: industrial boom in America, Franklin Rose brought many new deal
Speaker 1: projects to an end. The Packhorse Library Program officially ended
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three. After serving most of eastern Kentucky
Speaker 1: for the better part of a decade, While the book
Speaker 1: women no longer rode through the mountain trails, books found
Speaker 1: a new way to travel around Kentucky. During the decade
Speaker 1: the WPA was modernizing the state. Many new roads had
Speaker 1: been built through the mountains, which gave some of the
Speaker 1: out of work bookwomen an idea. In nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: Kentucky's first motorized bookmobile began driving through the mountains, bringing
Speaker 1: books to the people. Nearly seventy years later, their legacy
Speaker 1: still has a lasting impact. Today, Kentucky's Libraries operates seventy
Speaker 1: five bookmobiles across the state. It truly is a miracle,
Speaker 1: an evidence of the enduring power of books. Over one
Speaker 1: hundred years after its story first began, the pack Horse
Speaker 1: Library is still delivering Hope Hope. If you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities, subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.