Charles H. Friend

[John Grant]

Charles H. Friend was born in January 1834 in the state of Maryland. On July 8, 1861, he enlisted as a volunteer in the 2nd Minnesota Infantry and was assigned to Company F.
During this time, he was first promoted to corporal and then to sergeant. Compared to other Union regiments in the Civil War, the regiment suffered relatively few casualties for such heavy participation in combat, losing 281 men during the war, of whom 2 officers and 91 men were killed in action, and 2 officers and 186 men were wounded.
On April 1, 1865, shortly before the end of the war, Friend was promoted to 2nd lieutenant and, after the war ended on May 21, 1865, to 1st lieutenant. On July 11, 1865, the regiment was disbanded and the surviving soldiers were discharged in Louisville, Kentucky, including Friend.
On September 17, 1865, he married Mary Jane Standish at Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, Minnesota.
Mary Jane Standish was born in New York City in 1844 and worked as a nurse. Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine whether she had already been working as a nurse during the Civil War, nor whether Friend had been wounded and they had met that way.
The couple had three children:
Nina J. Born 1867 / Died 1952
Frank, born in 1868, died?
Anna, born on November 10, 1872, died on December 25, 1964
Mary Jane Friend died in April 1930 and Charles H. Friend died a month later in May 1930. They were buried side by side at Lake Ripley Cemetery in Meeker County, Minnesota.

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

Does that medal that Mary Jane is wearing give any clue as to her possible service as a nurse during the war?

 

[John Grant]

No, the medal is from the Woman's Relief Corps. To my knowledge, nurses did not receive their own medals during the war.
The information that she was a nurse comes from various websites.

 

[Linda Bryan]

John Grant....just shooting spitball nurse ideas here...
If she came from New York, it is most likely that she was nursing in the eastern theaters yet the Western Sanitary Commission was in charge of many of the military hospitals in the west and I would assume Kentucky might have been among these. You'll have to look both directions.

• Fundraising for the Western San. Com. was done through the big cities (Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, etc.) and publicity and solicitation was in western newspapers. I believe that the western group was under a somewhat less straitlaced management than the eastern one, Dorothea Dix having original sway over many of the nurse recruits, but then others such as Mary Bickerdyke forced humane changes into the western hospitals. For example, she launched the concept of "diet kitchens" so that patients who needed fare different from the military rations could be given such things as custard. (Imagine trying to digest salt pork, dried beef, and hardtack after receiving a belly wound!) The records of the San. Commission may have flyers that give clues as to how a woman connected with the military nurse programs. Start with some Google searches.

• Jane Swisshelm, the firey editor of the St. Cloud, Minnesota newspaper, served as a nurse in the East at medical stations near the front, but I can't recall why she didn't serve in the West--perhaps because she was originally from Pennsylvania? She wrote a book about her experiences; I recall reading her criticism of strict but inane rules that made spontaneous, on-the-spot nursing decisions illegal. She battled the rules.

• There are a few 19th C. nursing memoirs and at least one compendium that has a list of names from the Western San. Commission I believe.
• Another good lead would be to use digitized newspapers. I use Newspapers.com (as subscription plus through Ancestry.com) and Geneology Bank subscription. If you have access to historic periodicals through a library subscription database, that would also be a lead; religious groups might have data about donations and about hospitals.
• Online I found a publication of Christian Commission that contained visitor reviews of military hospitals and mentioned names sometimes.

I'm trying to track a couple nurses who served at St. Louis and have found an assortment of news pieces--some from their hometown newspapers in which their letters to their own families and acquaintences were published and some written by the nurses on behalf of the hospitals thanking donors for clothing, preserved food. and supplies; this stuff then gives me leads to the hometown states' benevolent support organizations such as a city's Soldier's Aid, Ladies' Aid, etc. One of the nurses was from Philadelphia and one from Akron, Ohio yet they served together so I'm trying to learn why the Eastern woman served in the West.

I have been surprised that I don't find much of this kind of nursing journalism that refers to Minnesota, though. I've wondered why. Maybe because in part we were such a new state and had been hit so hard by economic conditions after Panic of 1857 but also because few Minn. residents had the wherewithal to spare clothing or produce, given that in the new state they were newly settled young families just beginning to farm and living very economically themselves. Also, because of the Dakota violence, Minnesota itself had a refugee problem as whites in Southern Minn. fleeing the Indians abandoned their homes -- charity donations were very likely being made closer to home. I've heard that this was our first "social work" venue.

Each year at the Hastings Le Duc House "Civil War Weekend" I solicit donations to the Am. Miss. Assoc. "on behalf of the Coloreds of the South." In researching this, I looked for evidence of Minnesota Freedmen's and soldier's aid groups and didn't find any, but still hope to. I believe that Minn. donations to the hospitals probably were subsumed into Chicago, Detroit, or St. Louis donations and became anonymous. There may have been outreaches through religious denominations, masking the donor sources, although some publications of benevolent groups were good at making donor lists at the back of each issue.

If I can locate evidence of my nurses by doing a lot of digging you might be able to also, but it's not an easy thing. The internet allows us to do this in middle of night in our p.j.'s though, so that's easier than some kinds of research.

• There was a lot of crossover between Freedmen's Aid and Soldier's Aid donors. In your searches, try a lot of key words. And learn about the nurse's home family--they may be donors here, giving you some clues as to her life and motivation.

• In the 1890s the war nurses were finally recognized by Congress and given a meager pension if application was made. I found the application material of the longer-lived nurse through the NARA catalog online. I also found documentation of the hospitals she served in and the dates of her pay. It takes a huge amount of time and patience but it is possible to locate a nurse there, and her home town at the time of application for pension. Worth a try. [And, if you sign up to be a volunteer for NARA you can help add transcriptions and key words for the digitized documents at the same time. See "History Hub."]

• It is also possible that a community would celebrate the pension and recognize the nurse by running a news piece or holding a local celebration at the end of the century, or at the woman's death. And there were G.A.R. units that might have included such women either as special members or within auxiliaries in some way, so look into the history of GAR in your area. One of "my" nurses appears on a list of veterans of the state. Perhaps there was some kind of Civil War lookback at which a monument or proclamation was made?

• You will also want to look for any announcement of the marriage of your Friends...the wife's unique background might have been mentioned. And also in the community's women's groups--perhaps she gave postwar talks? And look into local women's movement histories--she might be there.

• Try Find-A-Grave...worth a try. Sometimes obits give leads.

• I've had occasional success as an Ancestry.com user in contacting relatives of people I'm searching for--I do an Ancestry search and their fam. tree shows up. It is usually possible to contact the owner of the tree. Mostly this is a dead-end but sometimes brings real gold.
Also, on Ancestry you can work up a fam. tree of the nurse this way and then figure out who else in extended fam. might have info, such as the children of the person or the person's siblings. Be a detective!

• It's not unusual for people like the retired nurses to become involved in other benevolent, Christian, or community organizations. Brainstorm what might be available in the communities they lived in and where they may have left records. One of my nurses became a missionary and I found her in the Pennsylvania office of the Presbyterian Historical Soc. What a story! Would you believe she served as an Ojibwe mission medical missionary-matron for a while?

As for your Friend-ly soldier, start with NARA catalog. Also check with Minn .Hist. Society if you haven't already*. Is there a group of reenactors doing the 2nd Minnesota? If so, they've got info! And look for lists of military groups in newspapers--sometimes the wounded are listed after battles or when the unit returns home.

* The Minn. Hist. Soc is broke. It will be curtailing on-site research to appointment only, but long-distance research is a money-maker for them so don't give up.

• look for news pieces about Civil War veteran parades, memorial dedications, etc. She might be there, especially in a small community!

 

[Linda Bryan]

A quick internet search for Charles F. Friend in 2nd Minn Infantry gets me this....https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ndnp/mnhi/batch_mnhi_dunbar_ver01/data/sn83045366/00206538405/1906081601/0006.pdf
It's a lib. of Congress item, a 1906 page covering a surviving veterans get-together. Search the page for "Friend" and you will find two of them in the unit, Charles and .... a possible brother from St. Paul?

 

[John Grant]

@ Linda Bryan
Thank you very much and respect for the work you have done.
I'll see what I can find out...