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I would like to begin a new thread to honour, individually, the courageous and compassionate women who volunteered as nurses in order to ease the suffering of the wounded and dying, at the time of the Civil War.
We'll start with a "modern day angel," who is the ggg grandaughter (I hope I have that right Martin!) of William Gose Suiter, 8th Va. Cav., and the daughter of our own member 8th Cav, Martin Suiter. Lori willingly, and with compassion, on April 2, 2005, held the hand of an elderly gentlman, who had been injured during a pile-up on the I-75, Macon, Georgia, until he received proper medical attention.
"Far away, there in the sunshine, are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead." ~Louisa May Alcott~
Just a little more on Lori. I think she would have made a good nurse in CW.I have five children and love them all. Lori is the middle one. We call her the doer. If Nancy or I are sick, there's Lori. If we need to go 45 miles to Indy to the doctor, there's Lori. As you can tell, I'm really proud of her.
__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
This is an incredible story of love and service to others. Thank you, Dawna and Martin, for sharing it. All too often we hear so much about tragedies and little or nothing about the people who so willingly give their time and support to others in need. I will look forward to reading other such stories of these compassionate people.
Phoebe Yeates Levy Pember was a 38 year old widow from Georgia who was appointed matron of Richmond's Chimborazo Army Hospital in November 1862. Her responsibilities included housekeeping and dietary kitchen personnel.Chimborazo became one of the largest military hospitals in the world, housing sixteen thousand patients. As the first female administrator of a hospital, Phoebe was subjected to male ridicule. Occasionally Phoebe had to pull a pistol from her pocket to keep doctors and ward stewards under her control.She was very dedicated and served until the end of the war. In 1879 her memories were recorded in A Southern Woman's Story. It was a valuable account of conditions in Confederate Hospitals and it condemns the drunkenness of surgeons and ward stewards.
Susan Leigh Colston was born in February, 1835, and became a member of one of Virginia's first families. In 1856, Susan married Charles Blackford, judge advocate under Longstreet.
Report from Lynchburg:
May 7, 1864: The wounded soldiers commenced arriving on Saturday, and just as soon as I heard of it, which was before breakfast, I went to see Mrs. Spence to know what I could do for them. She said the ladies had been so shamefully treated by the surgeons that she was afraid to take any move in the matter. I told her I would go and see Dr. Randolph and ask him if we could not do something.
I went down and did so at once and asked him what we could do. He said we might do anything we pleased in the way of attention to them; send or carry anything to them we wished and he would be glad of our help. As soon as I reported to Mrs. Spence what he said she started messengers in every direction to let it be known and I went to eleven places myself. We then determined to divide our provisions into two divisions: the bread, meat, and coffee to be sent to the depot, the delicacies to the hospitals. The reception of wounded soldiers here has been most hospitable. You would not believe there were so many provisions in town as have been sent to them.
On Saturday evening I went up to Burton's factory, where most of the wounded were taken, and found the committee of ladies who had been selected, of whom I was one, just going in with the supper. I went in with them. We had bountiful supplies of soup, buttermilk, tea, coffee, and loaf bread, biscuits, crackers, and wafers. It did my heart good to see how the poor men enjoyed such things. I went around and talked to them all.
One man had his arm taken off just below the elbow and he was also wounded through the body, and his drawers were saturated with blood. I fixed his pillow comfortably and stroked his poor swelled and burning arm. Another I found with his hand wounded and his nose bleeding. I poured water over his face and neck, and after the blood ceased to flow wiped his pale face and wounded hand which was black from blood and powder. They were very grateful and urged us to come and see them again.
On Sunday evening news came that six hundred more would arrive and Mrs. Spence sent me word to try and do something. The servants were away and I went into the kitchen and made four quarts of flour into biscuits and two gallons of coffee, and Mrs. Spence gave me as much more barley, so I made, by mixing them, a great deal of coffee. I am very tired.
May 12th: My writing desk has been open all day, yet I have just found time to write to you. Mrs. Spence came after me just as I was about to begin this morning and said she had just heard that the Taliaferro's factory was full of soldiers in a deplorable condition. I went down there with a bucket of rice milk, a basin, towel, soap, etc. to see what I could do.
I found the house filled with wounded men and not one thing provided for them. They were lying about the floor on a little straw. Some had been there since Tuesday . and had not seen a surgeon. I washed and dressed the wounds of about fifty and poured water over the wounds of many more. The town is crowded with the poor creatures, and there is really no preparations for such a number. If it had not been for the ladies many of them would have starved to death. The poor creatures are very grateful, and it is a great pleasure to us to help them in any way.
I have been hard at work ever since the wounded commenced coming. I went to the depot twice to see what I could do. I have had the cutting and distribution of twelve hundred yards of cotton cloth for bandages, and sent over three bushels of rolls of bandages, and as many more yesterday. I have never worked so hard in all my life and I would rather do that than anything else in the world. I hope no more wounded are sent here as I really do not think they could be sheltered.
The doctors, of course, are doing much, and some are doing their full duty, but the majority are not. They have free access to the hospital stores and deem their own health demands that they drink up most the brandy and whiskey in stock, and, being fired up most the time, display a cruel and brutal indifference to the needs of the suffering which is a disgrace to their profession and to humanity.
"So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself." ~Florence Nightingale~
Almira Fales was the first woman to perform any work for the comfort of the soldiers and in 1860, when South Carolina seceeded, she immediately began preparing hospital supplies. Almira's husband was employed by the government and her sons were in the Army.
During the war, Almira Fales personally used 7,000 boxes of hospital supplies, and distributed to sick and wounded soldiers "comforts and delicacies" to the value of $150,000. She spent several months at sea, attending to the wounded on hospital ships and was under fire during the Seven Days Battle of the Peninsula Campaign - one of her sons was killed at Chancellorsville.
It was said that Almira Fales never failed to awaken smiles and bring about a general air of cheerfulness.
"Campfires and Battlefields" by Rossiter Johnson, page 325
Hannah Anderson was born in New Gloucester, Maine to a family of early New England settlers. She married educator William H. Ropes at the age of twenty five; they lived in Waltham, Massachusetts and had four children, two of which lived to adulthood.
When her husband abandoned her, Hannah was left to raise her children and she bloomed in a new found self reliance. When her son was eighteen in 1855, he became a homesteader in the Kansas Territory. Increasingly interested in the abolitionist movement and the westward expansion, she and her daughter also moved to Kansas. But the political turmoil over the slavery issued caused Hannah's return to Massachusetts.
During this period Hannah was increasingly politically active and well connected. She wrote a novel, Cranston House and also published Six Months in Kansas. Like other women of the time, she was called upon to nurse sick friends. A nephew had sent her a copy of Florence Nightingale's newly published Notes on Nursing and Hannah Ropes must have been deeply influenced by Nightingale's writing.
When her son Edward served in the Civil War, she volunteered to serve as a nurse. She was assigned as head matron of the Union Hospital in Washington D.C., where she worked with Louisa May Alcott. She actively decried the appalling conditions - both the lack of sanitation and the indifference and even cruel treatment of the soldiers - and was pro-active in making change. For Hannah Ropes and other women "nurses" this meant butting heads with the military and physicians who resented the presence of women in the makeshift hospitals.
Hannah contracted typhoid pneumonia at that hospital and died at the age of 54. She had kept a diary which was only recently published. Between her diary and correspondence, a different perspective of the the Civl War and the emergence of nursing has been gained. Thus while Hannah Ropes was barely known during her own lifetime, her significant work is available for study and admiration today.
"How little can be done under the spirit of fear." ~Florence Nightingale~
Sources: Brumgardt, J.K. (Ed.). (1980). Civil War Nurses: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes. Knoxville: University of Tennesse Press.
Hawkins, J.W. (1988). Hannah A. Ropes In: Dictionary of American Nursing Biography. M. Kaufman, (Ed.). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Ropes, H.A. (1856). Six Months in Kansas by a Lady. Boston: Jewett.
Ropes, H.A. (1859). Cranston House: A novel. Boston: Clapp.
Born in New York to an abolitionist Quaker family, Abigail H. Gibbons grew up in a home that often harbored slaves on their way to freedom. Gibbons was also a medical nurse who brought the social convictions she learned at home to her medical and administrative duties. When the US Sanitary Commission was established in 1861 to over see the recruitment of much needed nurses, and ensure adequate medical care to the Union wounded, Gibbons was selected to serve. The Commission set up a training base for the female recruits at David’s Island Hospital in New York, and Gibbons was among them.
Gibbons traveled to Washington D.C., to help at the Washington Office Hospital, where she soon took charge, helping the wounded and distributing supplies from the New York Relief Agency. She also established two field hospitals: in Strasbourg and Falls Church VA. When a site opened for the government at Point Lookout MD, a hotel and 100 cottages were refurbished to create an elaborate hospital complex with accommodations for 1,500 soldiers. It was named the US Hammond General Hospital, after Surgeon General William A. Hammond.
At Hammond General, Gibbons clashed with a woman as aggressive and committed herself: Superintendent of Nurses Dorothea A. Dix, known as “Dragon Dix” for her cold ferocity. Dix and Gibbons vied for control of the hospital, and Gibbons succeeded in being appointed its head matron.
Gibbons served conscientiously at the institution, punctuating her career once again with controversy. She was accused of siphoning hospital to the “Contrabands,” or runaway slaves who came inti the hospital. Further, she refused to return the runaways to their owners. She left Hammond General in 1863 when the site was converted into Point Lookout Confederate Prison. Gibbons continued helping the Union cause and was an active philanthropist until she died in New York in 1893.
"The very requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm." ~Florence Nightingale~
Louisa May Alcott best known as the author of Little Women was a nurse at Georgetown Union Hospital in Washington DC beginning December 1862. She continued to nurse as long as her health permitted. She left her position in 1863, when she contracted typhoid fever from her patients. During her recuperation, she wrote of her nursing experiences in her first published book called HOSPITAL SKETCHES.The book is valuable for its vivid descritions of medical activities during the war. Appalled by the lack of sanitation, Louisa described the military hospital as a "perfect pestilence box."
An excerpt from Hospital Sketches:
"The night whose events I have a fancy to record, opened with a little comedy, and closed with a great tragedy; for a virtuous and useful life untimely ended is always tragical to those who see not as God sees. My headquarters were beside the bed of a twelve year old New Jersey boy, crazed by the horrors of that dreadful Saturday. A slight wound in the knee brought him there; but his mind had suffered more than his body; some string of that delicate machine was over strained, and, for days, he had been reliving in imagination, the scenes he could not forget, till his distress broke out in incoherent ravings, pitiful to hear. As I sat by him, endeavoring to soothe his poor distracted brain by the constant touch of wet hands over his hot forehead, he lay cheering his comrades on, hurrying them back, then counting them as they fell around him, often clutching my arm, to drag me from the vicinity of a bursting shell, or covering up his head to screen himself from a shower of shot; his face brilliant with fever; his eyes restless; his head never still; every muscle strained and rigid; while an incessant stream of defiant shouts, whispered warnings, and broken laments, poured from his lips with that forceful bewilderment which makes such wanderings so hard to overhear."
"I like to help women help themselves, as that is, in my opinion, the best way to settle the woman question. Whatever we can do and do well, we have right to, and I don't think any one will deny us." ~Louisa May Alcott~
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Angels of the Battlefield 
Phoebe Yeates Levy Pember was a 38 year old widow from Georgia who was appointed matron of Richmond's Chimborazo Army Hospital in November 1862. Her responsibilities included housekeeping and dietary kitchen personnel.Chimborazo became one of the largest military hospitals in the world, housing sixteen thousand patients. As the first female administrator of a hospital, Phoebe was subjected to male ridicule. Occasionally Phoebe had to pull a pistol from her pocket to keep doctors and ward stewards under her control.She was very dedicated and served until the end of the war. In 1879 her memories were recorded in A Southern Woman's Story. It was a valuable account of conditions in Confederate Hospitals and it condemns the drunkenness of surgeons and ward stewards.
Louisa May Alcott best known as the author of Little Women was a nurse at Georgetown Union Hospital in Washington DC beginning December 1862. She continued to nurse as long as her health permitted. She left her position in 1863, when she contracted typhoid fever from her patients. During her recuperation, she wrote of her nursing experiences in her first published book called HOSPITAL SKETCHES.The book is valuable for its vivid descritions of medical activities during the war. Appalled by the lack of sanitation, Louisa described the military hospital as a "perfect pestilence box."
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