Cathay Williamsthe WorkbenchISTP

On 15 November 1866, in St. Louis, a recruit giving the name William Cathay signed up for three years in the 38th United States Infantry. The recruit was about 22, and her name was Cathay Williams.

She had been born enslaved in Missouri. In 1861, Union soldiers occupying Jefferson City took her with them as contraband, the army's word for enslaved people it carried off, and set her to cooking and washing. By her own later account, she had not wanted to go. For the rest of the war she followed the army and watched soldiering up close.

When the war ended she wanted a living of her own, without leaning on family or friends. So she enlisted. Two people in the regiment knew her secret, a cousin and a close friend, and in nearly two years neither of them gave her away.

Workbenches tend to keep a small circle and choose it carefully. This is what it looks like when they choose well: two people who know the truth about you and simply never tell.

The 38th was one of the new regiments of Black soldiers who came to be called Buffalo Soldiers, sent west into the army's wars against Indigenous nations. Soon after she enlisted, she caught smallpox. Then came long marches to posts in New Mexico, and stay after stay in the hospital. In between, she carried her musket and stood guard like everyone else.

By the summer of 1868 she had had enough. She did not desert, which could have meant prison. She did not confess, which could have meant scandal. She reported sick, complained of pains, and let the post surgeon at Fort Bayard find out the rest. On 14 October 1868 she was discharged.

It is the quiet door, and Workbenches are very good at finding it. There was no speech and no scene. She used the army's own routine, the sick call, and let it carry her out.

The exit still had a cost.

Afterward she cooked at Fort Union, then moved to Pueblo, Colorado, and married. Her husband, she said, was “no account.” He stole her watch and chain, a hundred dollars and her horses and wagon. She had him arrested and moved on to Trinidad.

That is where a reporter found her, and in January 1876 the St. Louis Daily Times printed her story. She was making clothes and taking in washing, and she told him she liked the town and expected to get rich yet.

In 1891 she applied for a disability pension on the strength of her service. It was refused. After that she disappears from the record, and nobody knows when or where she died.

Her story starts with a door she did not choose. Every door after that, in and out, she picked herself.