Ginnie was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Her name is commonly misspelled "Jenny" or "Jennie" Wade due to a typo in the newspaper. She worked as a seamstress with her mother in their house on Breckenridge Street while her father was in a mental asylum. She was engaged to a Jack Skelly who had been wounded two weeks earlier in the Battle of Winchester and died from his injuries on July 12, 1863, unaware of Ginnie's death.
Ginnie and her mother had traveled to her sister Georgia McClellan's house on 528 Baltimore Street on July 1, 1863, during the first day's fighting to assist her and her newborn child. More than 150 bullets hit her sister's home before, around 8:30 a.m. on July 3, a Minié ball, traveling through the door, hit her in the back while she was kneading bread for Union soldiers. She groaned and was killed instantly. While it is uncertain which side fired the fatal shot, many authors have attributed it to an unknown Confederate soldier.
Shortly afterward, her mother discovered the body and told the rest of the family. Ginnie was temporarily buried in the basement, and then in the family garden. Her mother baked 15 loaves of bread on July 4 with the dough Ginnie kneaded.
Ginnie Wade was reburied for the third and last time in Evergreen Cemetery in November 1865, near her fiancé, Jack Skelly. A monument was erected in 1900 with an American Flag flying there around the clock. (The only other woman who shares this distinction is Betsy Ross at the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia.)
The Ginnie Wade monument is one of the more popular attractions at the Evergreen Cemetery.
