Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the well-known Oswego native, will be featured on U.S. Quarters as a part of the United States American Women Quarters Program. The program, started in 2022 and continuing through 2025, chooses five woman icons each year to be featured on the reverse side of quarters both in circulation and for collectors. The inclusion of Dr. Mary Walker this year continues a long line of women’s rights icons featured on the coins, including astronaut Sally Ride, writer Maya Angelou and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

According to a biography crafted by Kerri Lee Alexander, fellow of the National Women’s History Museum, Mary Edwards Walker, born in Oswego in 1862, grew up interested in medicine as her father had a collection of medical literature. Walker would later teach at a school in nearby Minetto, just southeast of Oswego, and graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1855. Early on in her life, struggles because of her sex and gender started. She was not trusted or respected as a physician and was kicked out of another institute because she refused to resign from an all-male school debate society. 

At the start of the American Civil War, she was rejected as a surgeon for the army because she was a woman, but became a civilian volunteer instead. The army soon picked her up as a surgeon, becoming the first female surgeon in the army.

However, she was captured by Confederate troops, where she stayed a prisoner-of-war for four months before a prisoner exchange. After the war, President Andrew Johnson awarded Walker the Medal of Honor to validate her service. Since that time, no other woman has been awarded such honor, making Dr. Mary Walker the only woman Medal of Honor recipient. Later in life, Walker became a part of the abolitionist and prohibitionist movements, and a significant leader in dress reform. 

“She addressed child and spousal sexual abuse,” George DeMass,  Town of Oswego Historian, said. “This was in 1878! Quite a bold step for those times… The community of the Town and City of Oswego are elated that one of their own has been so honored as well as her image on the US quarter in June 2024. Events for the year for its release are being planned as we speak,” DeMass added. 

Mary Walker died in Oswego in 1919 at age 86 and is also buried here. Her name is used for the local medical center here on campus, as well as Fort Walker in Virginia, which was recently renamed to honor her last month. Fort Walker is the first fort named solely for a woman. 

The coin depicts Dr. Walker “holding her pocket surgical kit, with the Medal of Honor on her uniform, and surgeon’s pin at her collar,” according to United States Mint, a bureau of the Department of Treasury that dedicates itself to the coinage used in American commerce and trade. Phebe Hemphill was the sculptor who designed the quarter after Mary Walker was selected from a long list of public submissions. The coin will be released in 2024 alongside four other designs, including Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz and the first woman of color in Congress, Patsy Takemoto Mink.

Photo by Nicolas Diaz Contreras