Angels of the Battlefield

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Alvira Beech Robinson came from Pierrepont where she was born in 1835. She married David Robinson and had three children: George (1856), Charles (1860), and Sarah (1861). Two of Alvira’s brothers, Alva and Enos, enlisted early in 1861; her husband David enlisted in the 60th NY Infantry in October 1861. David was killed at Antietam in September 1862 and she returned to work as school teacher with three small children to raise.

In May 1863 Alva was shot in the leg and asked his sister to come to nurse him. She left her children with her mother and spent 2 months nursing Alva and also worked in the government printing office to defray her expenses in Washington. She returned to West Pierrepont in August 1863. Alva came home that fall to finish his recovery and Enos left the army suffering from “the lung fever.” Alvira undoubtedly cared for both of them, her own three children, and her mother. She continued to support herself and her family, setting up the Pierrepont post office and serving as its first postmaster in July 1876. She operated it out of her own home for 15 years until it was moved a few miles away.

"Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can."
~Princess Diana~

Women of Courage: St. Lawrence County, N.Y. Branch of the American Association of University Women

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Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997.

Controversy surrounded Mary Edwards Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832 in the Town of Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is marked with a historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many of the reform movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid 1800s. He believed strongly in education and equality for his five daughters Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one son, Alvah). He also believed they were hampered by the tight-fitting women's clothing of the day.

His daughter, Mary, became an early enthusiast for Women's Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of dress reform. The most famous proponent of dress reform was Amelia Bloomer, a native of Homer, New York, whose defended a colleague's right to wear "Turkish pantaloons" in her Ladies' Temperance Newspaper, the Lily. "Bloomers," as they became known, did achieve some popular acceptance towards the end of the 19th century as women took up the new sport of bicycling. Mary Edwards Walker discarded the unusual restrictive women's clothing of the day. Later in her life she donned full men's evening dress to lecture on Women's Rights.

In June 1855 Mary, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in the nation when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She gratuated at age 21 after three 13-week semesters of medical training which she paid $55 each for.

In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller, wearing trousers and a man's coat and kept her own name. Together they set up a medical practice in Rome, NY, but the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice floundered. They were divorced 13 years later.

When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon -- the first female surgeon in the US Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the US Patent Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga).

In September 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons.

She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still less than some widows' pensions.

On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award.

In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only “actual combat with an enemy” She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told the New York Times: "Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her time and no one could stomach it." An Army board reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex." After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer, touring here and abroad on women's rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association in 1866. Walker prided herself by being arrested numerous times for wearing full male dress, including wing collar, bow tie, and top hat. She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and commentary called Hit and a second book, Unmasked, or the Science of Immortality. She died in the Town of Oswego on February 21, 1919 and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery Road.

"Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence." ~Abigail Adams~

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Steven:

Thank you for mentioning the nuns and civilian women of the Civil War - these courageous women were also 'angels' of the battlefield and should be remembered as well.

Dawna

Your most Welcome.

Sreven

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Ellon McCormick Looby was born in Ireland in 1834, immigrated to the United States as a teenager, and married another Irishman, Rody Looby, in Waddington, NY 1854. They had three sons, John (1860), William (1866) , and Richard (1870). In December 1863 Rody enlisted in the 14th NY Heavy Artillery at Potsdam and served for several months before he was wounded in the Battle of Petersburg in July 1864. When Ellon received word of her husband’s injury, she “left Norwood with my only child 4 year old in my arms and started for city point.” City Point Hospital was located near Richmond, VA. Rody was transferred to the Central Park Hospital in VA and Ellon served there as a nurse from August 1864 through the end of the war in 1865.

"I can stand out the war with any man." ~Florence Nightingale~

"St. Lawrence County Historical Association"

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Two other women who served as nurses during the Civil war were Miss Mary A. B. Young and Mrs. Thomas Rhodes. Miss Young, the sister of Captain James Young of the 60th NY Volunteers, reportedly died of the fever “at her post in Annapolis, MD” along with fellow nurse Miss R. M. Billings in January 1865. She is buried in the Greenwood Cemetery in Morristown. Mrs. Rhodes, who died on 1893 in Fullerville, Town of Fowler was described as “a nurse in the late war” in a newspaper clipping of her death notice.

"Lord into thy hands I commend my spirit." ~Lady Jane Grey~

St. Lawerence County Historical Association

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Aunt Lizzie Aiken from Peoria


Auntie Lizzie Aiken


A memorial book published in 1906 at the time of her death describes Aunt Lizzie Aiken's war service: In 1861 Mrs. Aiken was fired with the spirit of her revolutionary sires and offered her services as nurse to Major Niglas, head surgeon of the Sixth Illinois Cavalry, and also known throughout the state as "Gov. Yates' Legion."

In November, 1861, the regiment was ordered to Shawneetown and Mrs. Aiken accompanied it. Here "Aunt Lizzie" won her sobriquet. As she passed from cot to cot ministering to the comfort of the suffering soldiers, one of the patients asked Major Niglas: "What shall we call this kind woman?" "You may call her Aunt Lizzie," answered the surgeon. She was never known by any other name during the entire war.

The winter of 1861 was severe, and accommodations for the soldiers inadequate, giving the nurses, two in number, plenty of work. The number of patients ranged from twenty to eighty every day, and the heroic women worked day and night each taking charge of the hospital for six-hour watches. In January, 1862, "Aunt Lizzie" wrote to a friend as follows:

"Quite a little incident took place yesterday; we, as nurses, were sworn into the United States service. Dr. Niglas tells me I have saved the lives of more than 400 men. I am afraid I hardly deserve the compliment. General Grant, General Sturgis and General Sherman paid us a visit. All join in saying that we excel all other hospitals in being attentive to our sick and in cleanliness. They suggested my going to Cairo. Dr. Niglas spurned the proposition, and I did too. I cannot tell you how well this work suits this restless heart of mine; my great desire to do something to benefit my fellow creatures is gratified in my present occupation."

Would you know more of the experiences of Aunt Lizzie in the Army? Ask the patriots of 1861 and 1865. They will tell you in broken sentences as they lay upon their cots in the hospitals of Memphis or Paducah, of the tender care that saved their lives or of the pleading prayer that saved their souls. Aunt Lizzie has always been an honored guest and speaker at all of the G. A. R. encampments which she has attended.

Peoria Public Library, Peoria, Illinois

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." ~Amelia Earhart~

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Fannie A. Jackson, ? - 1925


Fannie A. Jackson suffered the same hardships shared by women throughout the South. Her husband had been conscripted for the duration of the war, and she was left to face growing shortages on their small family farm in northern Georgia. She worked in the fields, took care of the animals, and somehow found time to spin and cook for her small children.

Yet despite bring Southerners, born and bred, both Jacksons had strong Union sympathies. Mr Jackson had vowed that he would seek an opportunity to desert and take the family to the North, while Fannie, who opposed secession, was to write, “I felt as id slavery was wrong... a dark spot on American civilization... so foul and evil”

On May 8, 1864, Union forces under General Sherman, on their way to Atlanta, were engaged in a battle near the Jackson farm. Despite having lost everything to the Northerners, Jackson volunteered to nurse the wounded in her tiny house, “a log cabin, ... with only one room.” In gratitude, the Union quartermaster gave her a few sacks of supplies - as well as letter of recommendation to Northern Authorities.

With the departure of Union troops from what was left of her home, Jackson deposited her children with neighbors and on June 12, 1864, presented herself as a nurse in the General Field Hospital of the Union Army of the Cumberland, then stationed in Georgia. She soon gained a reputation for patient and compassionate nursing, one surgeon telling a young amputee that Mrs. Jackson would be a “mother” to him. When this young man died to years later due to lingering effects of his operation, Jackson was asked by his family to write his epitaph.

The Jacksons spent the rest of the war in Chattanooga TM, where she became head female nurse at the Union General Hospital on Lookout Mountain, and stayed there until September 1865. After decades of trying to obtain a pension, Jackson was awarded one in the 1890's. She died in Kansas in 1925.

Women in the Civil War

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is! ~Anne Frank~

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Mary Jane Safford, 1831 - 1891





During the Civil War female nurses demonstrated so much courage and determination, that by the second year of the war they had earned as much status and esteem as Florence Nightingale did during the Crimean War. One such nurse was Mary Jane Safford.

Born in Hyde Park VT, then raised in Crete IL, Safford returned to Vermont for further education after her parents death. She then worked as a governess for a German family in Canada. Returning to the states, she lived with her brother in Cairo IL. When Mary Ann “Mother” Bickerdyke arrived at the fever-ridden field hospital in Cairo in the summer of 1861, 29-year-old Safford volunteered as a nurse’s aid.

She proved to be very talented and dedicated and quickly became a full-time nurse.

Safford worked tirelessly for the diseased and wounded Union soldiers from the Battled of Belmont and Fort Donelson. Though overworked in the field hospital, she often went to surrounding camps to tend to the sick. After the Battle of Donelson, Safford worked with very little sleep for 10 days, ministering to the needs of the wounded men until she neared collapse. She then moved to nursing aboard the City of Memphis, a transport boat, until she had to return to her brother’s home because of her poor health.

Safford returned to nursing to help the wounded Union soldiers from the Battle of Shilho, working on board the Hazel ****, with appreciative patients dubbing her the “Angel of Cairo”. She then returned to working with Mother Bickerdyke in field hospitals in Savannah TN. In spite of hurting her back, Safford continued to over work until she suffered a physical breakdown and was confined to bed for months. Safford went to Europe to finish recuperating and then returned to the United States on the fall of 1866.

Safford went on to become an accomplished doctor with her own practice in Chicago. She married, divorced, and then taught at Boston University School of Medicine before dying in Tarpon Springs FL.

"Great necessities call out great virtues." ~Abigail Adams~

Women in the Civil War

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Lorinda Anna Blair (Annie) married James Etheridge in 1860 and followed him when he joined the 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment. Although James quickly deserted the army, his young wife Annie Etheridge transferred to the the 3rd Michigan and later to the 5th Michigan where she remained for the duration of the war. She was on the battlefield nursing her wounded comrades at some of the bloodiest battles of the war including both engagements at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Spotsylvania.

Surviving letters from two different soldiers wrote of Annie "binding the wounds of a man when a shell exploded nearby, tearing him terribly and removing a large portion of the skirt of her dress" and "in the very frontof the battle dressing wounds and aiding the suffering where few surgeons dared show themselves". In September 1864 when General Grant ordered the removal of all women from Union army camps in Virginia a large number of officers including the corps commander signed a petition asking Grant to allow Annie to stay with her regiment. Grant refused and Annie spent a few months nursing in a Union army hospital and on board a hospital transport ship but was back with the 5th Michigan when the unit mustered out on July 17, 1865. After the war she worked as a clerk in the U.S. Pension Office. In 1886 the U.S. Senate granted her a pension of $25 per month for her wartime service. She died in 1913 and received a veteran's burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?
~Anne Frank~

Women in the Civil War

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Kate Cumings
1828-1909


"....from my experiences since last writing on that subject, that a lady's respectability must be at a low ebb when it can be endangered by going into a hospital."
- Kate Cumings, regarding the lack of volunteer nurses.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Kate Cuming's family moved to Montreal, and then to the bustling cotton port of Mobile, Alabama. Early in the Civil War, Kate was inspired by an address of the Rev. Benjamin M. Miller of Mobile to volunteer to help in Confederate hospitals. Kate was also greatly influenced by the work of Florence Nightingale, having known at least two people who had served with Nigthingale during the Crimean War.

At the age of 27, in April of 1862, and against the wishes of her family, who felt that "nursing soldiers was no work for a refined lady," Kate left for Northern Mississippi in April 1862, along with forty other women. The group of women, largely untrained, arrived outside the battlefield of Shiloh, while the battle was still in progress. Most women left soon after, but Kate remained in nearby Corinth and Okalona, Mississippi until June, 1862. She then spent two months in Mobile, Alabama, but soon volunteered to work at Newsome Hospital, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She would remain there for a year, until the summer of 1863, when the city was evacuated. During the time that Kate was at Newsome Hospital, the Confederate government officially recognized the role of women in hospitals.

From 1863 to the end of the war, Kate worked in the caravan of mobile field hospitals set up throughout Georgia to handle the effects of Sherman's devastation. The towns included Kingston, Cherokee Springs, Catoosa Springs, Tunnel Hill, Marietta, and Newnan.

Kate's work as a nurse was nothing extraordinary, but the detailed journal she kept during the War is invaluable. After she lived in Mobile and published A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army the War.

Eight years later, in 1874, still unmarried, she moved to Birmingham, Alabama with her father. She taught school and music and became very active in chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She died in Birmingham in 1909.

"Silence is more musical than any song." ~Christina Rossetti~

"Women in the Civil War"

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In December 1863, Walt Whitman read an account in the New York Tribune of the 51st New York Regiment's casualties at Fredericksburg. Whitman's younger brother George's name was listed in the newspaper, but there were no details of the nature or severity of his injuries.

Whitman immediately took the train south. He was robbed in Philadelphia and arrived in Washington penniless, hungry, and confused. He was lucky to run into two friends from Boston who loaned him money--Charles Eldridge and William Douglas O'Connor. After wandering around hospitals for two days seeking news of George and fruitlessly seeking an audience with Moses Fowler Odell, his Congressional representative from New York, Whitman decided to hitch a ride to the front lines in Virginia on a military transport. He found George, who had indeed been wounded in battle but not badly. (George wrote, "We have had another battle and I have come out safe and sound, although I had the side of my jaw slightly scraped with a peice [sic] of shell which burst at my feet.") Whitman shared George's tent on the front line for nine days, helping the medics and making himself as useful as possible. On December 28 he returned to the capital--and proceeded to stay on in Washington for a decade.

He found that there was a true need for his services in Washington. His voluntary work as a nurse and his close association with sick and dying soldiers gave him a deeper connection to life and a fuller understanding of human nature. He was a natural nurse, loving and selfless. As he wrote in his journal, he had "an instinct & faculty" for easing the suffering of these young wounded men.

His initial plan, to stay in DC for a week or two, would have allowed him time to visit all the Brooklyn soldiers from his brother's regiment who were now in Washington hospitals. But those soldiers introduced him to others, and Whitman could not nurse one man and refuse care to another.

Whitman wrote a letter to friends in New York, saying: "These thousands, and tens and twenties of thousands of American young men, badly wounded, all sorts of wounds, operated on, pallid with diarrhea, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, &c. open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity...For here I see, not at intervals, but quite always, how certain, man, our American man--how he holds himself cool and unquestioned master above all pains and bloody mutilations. It is immense, the best thing of all, nourishes me of all men."

Two months after arriving, he wrote in a letter to his brother Jeff about why he stayed on in this city: "I cannot give up my hospitals yet. I never before had my feelings so thoroughly and (so far) permanently absorbed, to the very roots, as by these huge swarms of dear, wounded, sick, dying boys--I get very much attached to some of them, and many of them have come to depend on seeing me, and having me sit by them a few minutes, as if for their lives."

Whitman visited all the hospitals in Washington at one time or another. There were approximately 40 in all (in a city whose pre-war medical facilities had numbered only two). The place where he spent the most time by far was the Armory Square Hospital, the closest hospital to the 6th Street Wharves, the river landing where the wounded were first unloaded from the battlefields to the south. Whitman wrote to his mother, "I devote myself much to Armory Square Hospital because it contains by far the worst cases, the most repulsive wounds, has the most suffering & most need of consolation." By June of 1863, he reported that "I go every day without fail & often at night--sometimes stay very late--no one interferes with me, guards, doctors, nurses, nor any one--I am let to take my own course."

Whitman also often went to the makeshift hospital in the Patent Office, now the National Portrait Museum, where patients were lying between glass display cases. This same space where men experienced "the suffering and the fortitude to bear it in various degrees--occasionally, from some, a groan...could not be repress'd" was later the scene of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball in 1865. Whitman wrote: "I have been up to look at the dance and supper-rooms, and I could not help thinking, what a different scene they represented to my view since, fill'd with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburgh. To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, the violins' sweetness, the polka and the waltz; then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds and blood." Whitman's later office at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where he worked as a clerk, was also in the basement of that same building.

A friend reported in an article in the New York Herald: "I saw him, time and again, in the Washington hospitals, or wending his way there with basket or haversack on his arm, and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed the devotion of woman...From cot to cot [soldiers] called him, often in tremulous tones or in whispers. They embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a sheet of paper or a postage stamp...As he took his way toward the door, you could hear the voices of many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! Come again! Come again!'"

Make no mistake: the work was extremely depressing and conditions were horrible. Roy Morris, Jr., in his book The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War, writes: "...'noxious effluvia'--bad smells--were still believed to be the chief cause of the rampant infections that raced unchecked through the hospital wards and carried off postoperative patients by the thousands...Medical care in the early 1860s was not much advanced from the Middle Ages...Typhoid fever, malaria, and diarrhea, the three most prevalent and deadly killers of the Civil War, tore through every hospital and camp, spread by infected drinking water, fecally contaminated food, and disease-transmitting mosquitoes. Meanwhile, attending physicians ascribed the ills to 'mephitic effluvia,' 'crowd poisoning,' 'sewer emanations,' 'depressing mental agencies,' 'lack of nerve force,' 'exhalations,' 'night air,' 'sleeping in damp blankets,' 'choleric temperament,' 'decay of wood,' 'odor of horse manure,' 'effluvia of putrefying corpses,' and 'poisonous fungi in the atmosphere'..."

Whitman changed dressings, bathed patients, administered medications, emptied bedpans, and sometimes even held soldiers during amputations and other surgeries.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. ~Oscar Wilde~


Excerpts from Waltman in Washington (Kim Roberts: Beltway Quarterly)

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Linda Richards





Linda Richards was born on July 27, 1841, the youngest daughter of Sanford Richards, an itinerant preacher, and his wife, Betsy Sinclair Richards. Her parents were married in Newport, Vermont in the mid-1830s and moved to a farm near the Racquette River in West Potsdam, NY. Linda was christened Malinda Ann Jusdon Richards by her father in hopes she would someday be a missionary like Ann Judson Hasseltine.

When Linda was four the family moved west to the Wisconsin territory where her father had purchased land in what is now Watertown, WI. He died six weeks after the family arrived from a lung hemorrhage. Mrs. Richards and her three daughters returned to Newbury, VT where they lived with Linda's grandfather until they bought a small farm in the area. Linda's mother became ill with tuberculosis, the same disease which had killed her father. Linda nursed her mother through her final illness and was only 13 when her mother died.

Linda's training as a nurse began under the supervision of Doc Currier, the family doctor who took care of her mother. From him she learned some medical knowledge. She lived with her grandfather until she was 15 when she enrolled in the St. Johnsbury Academy for a year of teacher training. Although not happy at St. Johnsbury, Linda did complete her training and taught school for several years in Newbury.

Linda met and became engaged to George Poole in 1860, but George went to the Civil War with the Green Mountain Boys before they married. He came home wounded in 1865 and Linda spent the next four years nursing him till his death in 1869.

After George's death, Linda moved to Boston where she was hired as an assistant nurse at the Boston City Hospital. Nurses were treated as little better than maids at the hospital and she left after only 3 months because of poor health. Some months later Linda noticed an advertisement for a nurse-training program to be offered at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. The resident physician, Miss. Susan Dimock, had studied medicine since she was 15 and had trained for surgery at the University of Zurich. Linda was one of five students who sign up for the course.

After a year of training, Linda Richards, the first student to enroll, was the first to graduate from the nursing program. Her diploma is in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Upon graduation, Linda became the night supervisor at Bellevue Hospital in New York City where she met Sister Helen, a nun of the All Saints Order, who had trained in the Nightingale System in London. At Bellevue Linda created a system for charting and maintaining individual medical records for each patient. This was the first written reporting system for nurses which even the famous Nightingale System adopted.

By 1874 Linda was ready to take over the floundering Boston Training School. Her administrative experience with Sister Helen helped her turn the program around and it became one of the best nurse training programs in the country.

In 1877 Linda traveled to England for seven months of intensive study. She spent two months at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, the hospital Florence Nightingale had established in 1860. It was during this time that she was able to meet Miss Nightingale herself, who suggested Linda study at King's College Hospital and the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary in Scotland. Dr. Joseph Lister, the father of antiseptic surgery, was working at the Edinburgh Infirmary during this period.

She returned to Boston in 1878 to work at the Boston College Hospital where she established a nurse training school. Following some health problems brought on by overwork, Linda used her experience to establish the first nurse-training program in Japan. She began in 1886, at first working through an interpreter. She stayed in Japan for 5 years before returning to America.

Linda Richards continued to establish nurse training programs and schools in Philadelphia, Massachusetts and Michigan. She retired in 1911 at age 70 when she wrote her autobiography, Reminiscences of Linda Richards. She suffered a severe stroke in 1923 and lived the remainder of her life at the New England Hospital for Women and Children where she had done her first training. She died on April 16, 1930 in Boston.

Linda Richards was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. Her portrait hangs in the lobby of the Canton-Potsdam Hospital, just a few miles from where America's first trained nurse was born.

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others." ~Winston Churchill~


"Women of Courage"

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The Catholic Sisters of Charity

On September 17, 1862 the Maryland authorities petitioned the help of the Sisters at St. Joseph 's of Emmitsburg , Maryland after the Battle of Antietam. When the Sisters went to the battlefield, they found wounded of both armies on the ground; many were moved to hospitals. "For six days, the Sisters went from farm to farm, seeking wounded and sick and risking their own lives because of unexploded bombshells" (Kelly 226). Courage and commitment to duty were a few of the solid characteristics of the Sisters. During the New York riots in July of 1863, the rioters threatened to set St. Joseph 's Military Hospital on fire. The Sisters of Charity refused to leave their patients. The fire was never set.

June 27, 1863 , Union troops arrived surrounding St. Joseph 's, at Emmitsburg , Maryland . They came up to the Sister's door and asked if they could have the privilege of stopping there. The Sisters said yes, even though they were fearful of a battle ensuing on their property. General Howard with his staff stayed in the Sister's house. General Shurtz and his officers stayed in the house that was formerly for an orphan asylum .

St. Joseph 's at Emmitsburg was selected by the Union army because "the Southern Army was a few miles West of Emmitsburg" (Kelly 232). In order to safeguard the property and Sisters at Emmitsburg, the Union generals stationed guards at various points. General R. de Trobriand said to Mother Ann Simeon, "Permit me to make one request. Ask St. Joseph to keep the rebels away from here; for, if they come before I get away, I do not know what will become of your beautiful Convent" (Kelly 233). Father Burlando and the two other priests went about hearing the confessions of the Catholic men while the Sisters got together as many scapulars and medals as they had. The Sisters also went about "slicing meat, buttering bread and filling canteens with coffee and milk for the famished soldiers" (Kelly 233). "The soldiers came in throngs to the house.

One squad succeeded another and each squad seemed hungrier than the last... All were bountifully supplied" (Kelly 232). Early on June 30, 1863 , "a sudden order war given to strike the tents and march for Gettysburg " (Kelly 234). In fifteen minutes all Union soldiers were gone, and St. Joseph 's convent grounds were quiet again. A few hours later Father was halted by some Confederate pickets demanding to know about the Union Army. From July first to the third the Battle of Gettysburg raged. Gettysburg was about nine miles from Emmitsburg . Amidst the roar of cannons and weapons of destruction and clouds of heavy smoke, the Sisters prayed without ceasing in the Chapel "imploring mercy for all" (Kelly 234). The fighting ended on the evening of July third. It rained during the night and through the next day, which hampered the efforts of the Sisters and others to care for the wounded. Many died from lack of care. In a horse-drawn carriage, Father Burlando and some of the Sisters went to Gettysburg with supplies and remedies for the wounded. They were filled with remorse by what they saw.

"Finally we reached the scene of combat. What a frightful spectacle met our gaze! Houses burnt, dead bodies of both Armies strewn here and there, an immense number of slain horses, thousands of bayonets, sabres, wagons, wheels, projectiles of all dimensions, blankets, caps, clothing of every color covered the woods and fields. We were compelled to drive very cautiously to avoid passing over the dead. Our terrified horses drew back or darted forward reeling from one side to the other. The ****her we advanced the more harrowing was the scene; we could not restrain our tears" (Kelly).

One hundred and thirteen emergency hospitals were established quickly at Emmitsburg. Every available building was used . At one point they ran out of supplies. When the Sisters appealed for supplies, they were told that there would be no more. "Is that your final decision?", Sister asked the officer. "Then I shall speak to the President." Before the day ended, supplies were delivered and the soldiers cheered(Tedesy 4). The Sisters "knew that they had a sincere friend in Lincoln " (Tedesy 3). By the end of the war, more than 280 Mother Seton's Sisters of Charity had nursed both Union and Confederate soldiers in military and local hospitals, on transport boats on the Atlantic coast and on the Mississippi, and at temporary military encampments. Many soldiers forgot about their anti-Catholic feelings because of the Sister's devoted care.

Even though these valiant Sisters risked life and limb to serve the sick and wounded soldiers physically, emotionally and spiritually from both sides, through the years, their contributions have frequently been overlooked in printed history and filmed accounts of the Civil War (Kelly 245). The Sisters' effort in the war was for the love of God and love of humanity. The high motives that inspired them to volunteer their services at the crisis in our nation's history has also prevented them from recording or publishing the amount and character of their services. Their good work has been literally hid books.

The Civil War did much to advance the best interests of women. More than 5,000 women served as nurses. It created a necessity for a woman's labor in a new way. It gave many women an opportunity to prove their ability and courage. Many entered history books. Many after serving, returned home to their quiet life or quiet convents. To this day the Sisters Of Charity still serve persons marginalized by poverty, illness, ignorance, disability and injustice" and help to fight other wars more silent, but just as deadly to the soul.

"Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. ~Louisa May Alcott~


Author: S Helms.

Works Cited

Adams, George. History of Civil War Medicine: Caring for Men. "Fighting For Time." Washington D. C.: National Historical Society, 1957.

Barton, George. Angels of the Battlefield. Philadelphia : Catholic Art Publishing, 1898.

Canton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War. New York : Viking Penguin, 1996.

Fugazy , SC , M. Irene. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Italy : Editions du Signe, 1997.

Holland , Mary Gardner. Our Army Nurses. Canada : Edinborough Press, 1998.

Kelly, Ellin. Numerous Choirs: A Chronicle of Elizabeth Bayley Seton and Her Spiritual Daughters Volume II: Expansion, Division, and War 1821-1865. Chicago : Abbey Press, 1996.

Tedesy, Ann. Lincoln and Nuns - Civil War Medicine. http://www.rsa.lib.il.us/ilwomen/files/qu/htm2/qutansey1.html 10 February 1999 .

Ward, Geoffrey. The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York : Alfred A. Knoff, Inc. 1990.

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Sarah Emma Edmonds

(1842-1898)

Emma Edmonds was one of approximately 400 women who succeeded in enlisting in the army (either Union or Confederate) during the Civil War. Her uniqueness is that she not only succeeded in remaining in the army for several years, but was also eminently successful as a Union spy-all while impersonating a man.

Born in Nova Scotia, Emma had a very difficult early life. Her father greatly resented the fact that she was not born a boy and subsequently he treated her badly in her early life. To counter his temper Emma did all she could to prove that she was in fact a boy underneath her femininity. Finally the father's treatment got so abusive that Emma fled from her home to the United States where she quickly adapted to a new life. The United States became her country and it was a natural thing for her to want to defend "her country" when the war began.

Emma was living in Flint, Michigan, when the first call for Union enlistments went out. She wanted to answer the call. So she cropped her hair, got a man's suit of clothing, took the name of Frank Thompson and tried to enlist. It took her four tries but finally she did in fact get sworn into the Union Army (at that time the physical consisted merely of asking the enlistee questions-no medical examination). On April 25, 1861, Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a male nurse in the Second Volunteers of the United States Army.

After training in Washington, D.C., Emma's unit was sent south to be part of McClellan's campaign in Virginia. Private Thompson (Emma) was assigned as a male nurse to the hospital unit of the 2nd Michigan Volunteers and had no trouble in maintaining her masculine masquerade. Even before the hostilities erupted on a full scale two events occurred that changed Private Thompson's life forever. The events were:</STRONG>

(1) A Union agent working in Richmond for McClellan was caught and faced a firing squad. This left a void in the intelligence gathering for McClellan.

(2) A young officer, named James Vesey, who Emma had known back in Canada, was killed on a patrol. Emma, not knowing this, went to see him and arrived at his unit just as his funeral was about to begin.

As a result of these events, when the word went out that McClellan's staff was looking for a person to act as a spy prior to the campaign-Private Frank Thompson volunteered. She studied all she could find on weapons, tactics, local geography and military personalities and when interviewed for the position, Private Thompson so impressed the staff that the position was his (hers).

Prior to her first mission, Private Thompson had to devise a disguise that would not alert the Confederates to her real mission and she decided to enter the Confederacy as a black man. Assisted by the wife of the local chaplain, the only person knowing her true identity, she used silver nitrate to darken her skin to the point that the doctor she worked for in the hospital did not recognize her. She donned men's clothing along with a black minstrel wig--chose the assumed name of "Cuff"--and departed on her first mission.

Once on the Confederate front she was soon assigned to work on the ramparts being built by the local Negroes to counter McClellan. Her hands were so blistered after the first day that she convinced a fellow slave to swap jobs with her and the second day she worked in the kitchen and all the time she kept her eyes and ears open. She learned a great deal about the morale of the troops, the size of the army, weapons available, and even discovered the "Quaker guns" (Logs painted black to look like cannons from afar) that were to be used at Yorktown.

After the second day, she was luckily assigned as a Confederate picket, which allowed her to escape and return to the Union side. The information she delivered was well received and she even had a personal interview with McClellan-after which she returned to duty as a male nurse in the hospital unit-but not for long.
About two months later, she once again was ordered to infiltrate the Confederate lines. She did not want to return as "Cuff," so she went as a fat Irish peddler woman with the name of Bridget O'Shea. Once again she successfully gained admittance to the Confederate camps-sold some of her wares and garnered as much information as she could. She returned to the Union camp not only with the information but with a beautiful horse from the Confederate camp, that she named Rebel. In the process of returning on this trip, Private Frank Thompson was wounded in the arm, but managed to stay in the saddle and elude the Confederates in the chase.

With the battle in Virginia slowing down, the Second Michigan was transferred to the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia, to support the efforts of General Philip Sheridan. Private Thompson's reputation as a nurse and also as a spy preceded the transfer and Private Thompson soon found new territory for spying. On several occasions Emma went behind the Confederate lines as "Cuff," a fellow of whom Emma herself said, "I truly admire the little fellow-he's a plucky one; got his share of grit."

In August of 1862, Private Thompson again went behind enemy lines and this time Emma went as a black mammy complete with the black face and the bandanna. On this trip she became a laundress in the camp and while cleaning an officer's coat a packet of official papers fell out of his pocket. Emma quickly picked them up and decided it was time to return to the Union side with the packet. She did and the officers were delighted with the information she had garnered.

At the end of 1862, her unit was transferred and this time they were sent to the Ninth Corps, commanded by General Ambrose Burnside, near Louisville, Kentucky. As before, the reputation of Private Thompson preceded the transfer and his secret missions continued in the new area. Here he was asked to assume the role of a young man with Southern sympathies by the name of Charles Mayberry, and go to Louisville to assist in identifying the Southern spy network in the town. Once again, Private Thompson succeeded in his mission-this time just prior to the unit's transfer to the army of General Grant in preparation for the battle of Vicksburg.

Under General Grant, Private Thompson worked long hours in the military hospital until a real dilemma arose. She became ill with malaria and could not admit herself to the hospital where her true identity would be discovered. After much soul-searching Emma decided that she had to leave camp for awhile and recover in a private hospital. Arriving in Cairo, Illinois, she once again became a woman and checked herself into a hospital for treatment of malaria. Once recovered Emma planned to don her uniform and rejoin her unit-that is until she read the army bulletins posted in the window of the Cairo newspaper office. There on the list of deserters from the Union army was the name of Private Frank Thompson.

With the last of her funds, Emma Edmonds bought a train ticket to Washington where she worked as a nurse until the end of the war. There would be no more secret missions for Private Frank Thompson to add to the eleven successful missions in his career.
After the war Emma wrote her memoirs titled Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, which became a very popular book selling thousands of copies. Emma gave all of her profits from the book to the U.S. war relief fund. Once the book was completed Emma became homesick for her native Canada; when she returned there she found love. In 1867 Emma married Linus Seeyle and went back to the United States, initially to Cleveland, Ohio. The marriage was happy, and Emma raised three sons, one of whom enlisted in the army "just like Mama did."

While happy in her family life Emma continued to brood over being branded a deserter in the Civil War. With the encouragement of her friends she petitioned the War Department for a full review of her case. The case was debated and on March 28, 1884, the House of Representatives passed House Bill Number 5335 validating Mrs. Seelye's case. The House Bill includes the following statements:



"Truth is ofttimes stranger than fiction, and now comes the sequel, Sarah E. Edmonds, now Sarah E. Seelye, alias Franklin Thompson, is now asking this Congress to grant her relief by way of a pension on account of fading health, which she avers had its incurrence and is the sequence of the days and nights she spent in the swamps of the Chickahominy in the days she spent soldiering.



That Franklin Thompson and Mrs. Sarah E.E. Seelye are one and the same person is established by abundance of proof and beyond a doubt. She submits a statement . . . and also the testimony of ten credible witnesses, men of intelligence, holding places of high honor and trust, who positively swear she is the identical Franklin Thompson. . . ."



On 5 July 1884, a special act of Congress granted Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson an honorable discharge from the army, plus a bonus and a veteran's pension of twelve dollars a month. The resulting Special Act of Congress read:



Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of Interior is hereby, authorized and directed to place on the pension roll, the name of Sarah E. E. Seelye, alias Frank Thompson, who was late a private in Company E, Second Regiment of Michigan Infantry Volunteers, at the rate of twelve dollars per month.



Approved, July 5, 1884



Now satisfied Emma lived out the rest of her life in La Porte, Texas, where she died on September 5, 1889. She is buried in the military section of Washington Cemetery in Houston, Texas. In honor of her duty and devotion to her country she is the only female member of the organization formed after the Civil War by Union veterans-The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). In her own words Emma Edmonds said of her adventures:



"I am naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious, and a good deal romantic-but patriotism was the true secret of my success."

"Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War" by Donald E. Markle

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Margaret Haughery

Margaret Haughery, "the mother of the orphans", as she was familiarly styled, b. in Cavan, Ireland, about 1814; d. at New Orleans, Louisiana, 9 February, 1882. Her parents, Charles and Margaret O'Rourke Gaffney, died at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1822 and she was left to her own resources and was thus deprived of acquiring a knowledge of reading and writing. A kind-hearted family of Welsh extraction sheltered the little orphan in their home.

In 1835 she there married Charles Haughery and went to New Orleans with him. Within a year her husband and infant died. It was then she began her great career of charity. She was employed in the orphan asylum and when the orphans were without food she bought it for them from her earnings. The Female Orphan Asylum of the Sisters of Charity built in 184O was practically her work, for she cleared it of debt.

During the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in the fifties she went about from house to house, without regard to race or creed, nursing the victims and consoling the dying mothers with the promise to look after their little ones. St. Teresa's Church was practically built by Margaret, in conjunction with Sister Francis Regis. Margaret first established a dairy and drove around the city delivering the milk herself; afterwards she opened a bakery, and for years continued her rounds with the bread cart.

Although she provided for orphans, fed the poor, and gave enormously in charity, her resources grew wonderfully and Margaret's bakery (the first steam bakery in the South) became famous. She braved General Butler during the Civil War and readily obtained permission to carry a cargo of flour for bread for her orphans across the lines. The Confederate prisoners were the special object of her solicitude.

Seated in the doorway of the bakery in the heart of the city, she became an integral part of its life, for besides the poor who came to her continually she was consulted by the people of all ranks about their business affairs, her wisdom having become proverbial. "Our Margaret" the people of New Orleans called her, and they will tell you that she was masculine in energy and courage but gifted with the gentlest and kindest manners. Her death was announced in the newspapers with blocked columns as a public calamity.

All New Orleans, headed by the archbishop, the governor, and the mayor attended her funeral. She was buried in the same grave with Sister Francis Regis Barret, the Sister of Charity who died in 1862 and with whom Margaret had cooperated in all her early work for the poor. At once the idea of erecting a public monument to Margaret in the city arose spontaneously and in two years it was unveiled, 9 July, 1884. The little park in which it is erected is officially named Margaret Place. It has often been stated that this is the first public monument erected to a woman in the United States, but the monument on Dustin Island, N.H., to Mrs. Hannah Dustin who, in 1697, killed nine of her sleeping Indian captors and escaped (Harper's Encyclopedia of American History, New York, 1902) antedates it by ten years.


"The Catholic Encyclopedia: Volume IX"