Rebecca McPherson Wright Bonsal (January 31, 1838 or 1842 – May 15, 1914) was an American Quaker teacher who was fired for her Unionist loyalty. She delivered important intelligence to the Union Army during the American Civil War, which helped Union Generals Philip Sheridan and George Crook defeat Confederate General Jubal Early in the crucial Third Battle of Winchester in September, 1864. However, the retaliation she feared from Confederate sympathizers in Winchester (the seat of Frederick County at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley), proved well-founded. After Wright wore a brooch given to her by General Sheridan in early 1867, her Confederate-sympathizing sister told a reporter its provenance. The resulting newspaper article led to social ostracism of Rebecca Wright and a boycott of the boarding house her mother ran with her daughters' help, and forced them to move to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Denied a soldier's pension because of her sex despite the efforts of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and General Sheridan, eventually Wright accepted a clerical job at the U.S. Treasury Department and moved to Washington, D.C., where she married a Union veteran, and worked until shortly before her death. Early life Rebecca Wright was the oldest surviving child of furniture manufacturer Amos Wright (1802-1864) and his wife Rachel (1810-1874). The Wright family were members of the Hopewell Meeting (a/k/a "Opequon Meeting") and thus did not own slaves. Young Rebecca was educated in Winchester, as well as for a year at the Friends School in nearby Loudoun County run by Samuel Janney. During the 1850 federal census, the family included three younger brothers and a young sister, By 1860, the older boys (subject to conscription) no longer resided with them. The Wright household in 1860 only included Amos, his wife, daughters, son John (aged 9) and a domestic servant, as well as two other families (a coachmaker, his wife and infant son, and a hatter, his wife and teen-aged daughter). American Civil War Rebecca Wright began teaching children when she was 15 years old, and during the three years before the American Civil War taught at the Hopewell Meeting's school, as well as assisted at Powell's Academy (a private school). Winchester changed hands 75 times in the four wartime years, including as a result of three major battles which occurred nearby. However, most townspeople sympathized with the Confederacy. In March 1862, Confederate troops arrested her father Amos (a leading Union sympathizer,