If Walls Could Talk: Helen Gilson And Marie's House

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
" If Walls Could Talk ". Would like to continue snapshots found inside our iconic photographs. We're so familiar with so, so many images from the war they tend to lose their place in Time. Who passed through their halls of horsehair plaster, what small moments a soldier took away with him, what shattered life ended there or how many lives were stubbornly wrestled back from Death's yawning brink? Some we know, a doorstep at Appomattox through which stepped a pair of boots carrying the fate of an army and a nation- to a table, in a room on an April day.

Fredericksburg, John L. Marie built his home on the heights in 1824. A Virginia businessman, Marie 's mansion reflected the fact that he would later, inevitably play his part in Virginia leaving the Union. As war crept closer Marie fled to safety, leaving the lovely home to become part of History.
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Helen Gilson, niece of Massachusetts governor Frank Fay marked a long stint as Civil War nurse by becoming best known for her compassion. It was due to her efforts the hospital for black soldiers at Petersburg underwent massive change, having been little more than a roof, dirt and bugs. Encountered by a shocked and horrified Gilson, she not only advocated for change but stuck around to make them. 900 men eventually ate meals served from the kitchen there. " Angel of Mercy " was applied to an awful lot of Civil War nurses- Helen Gilson wore it well.
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She came to Fredericksburg.
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https://archive.org/details/womansworkincivi5900broc

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There are other photographs of Marie's House, various people around it, rifle pits and camps. Like anything with a roof it was a hospital. Once in a great while we get a glimpse behind crazed panes a riddled brick. By great good fortune to untold numbers of wounded Dr. Reed was here. He chose to grace History with a snapshot of another Angel of Mercy, here also, Helen Gilson. So lucky he did.

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Maybe medical staff? Making no claims. Makes you wish walls really could speak to us.
 
Mary Livermore, in her sketch Massachusetts Women in the Civil War, described the work of Helen Gilson:

"Miss Helen L. Gilson, a beautiful young woman of Chelsea, Mass., a niece of Hon. Frank B. Fay, had an equally heroic record in other departments of the service. There is no space for the wonderful details of her army life. She was an exquisite vocalist, and wherever she went, through the wards of the hospitals or on the crowded hospital transports, she would sing patriotic songs or religious hymns, until the men would forget their miseries in their exaltation of soul. Although under thirty years of age, she became the matron of a hospital for colored soldiers at City Point, and with rare executive ability organized a “sick-diet kitchen," from which nine hundred men were served daily with the food necessary in their sad condition. She came out of the war with greatly impaired health, as did many women. She lived but a few years after, and her remains were buried in the Grand Army lot at Woodlawn, Malden, Mass. The soldiers for whose well-being she had given her life desired that her mortal body should rest among the remains of their comrades."

Her Find-a-Grave page.
"She married E. Hamilton Osgood in Chelsea, Massachusetts on October 11, 1866. On April 20, 1868 she died in childbirth at Newton Corner Hospital. She apparently was too weak for childbirth due to never having fully recovered from the malaria she contacted during the war. Her child did not survive either."
 
OH no! Died in childbirth? Poor, dear woman. One of those unfair turns of fate, after having given so much to so many. and only then wished a simple, normal life. Malaria was a bear. My great grandfather died of it decades after having worked on the Panama Canal. I don't think anyone did ever recover.

Helen's story has always stuck with me, when seeing images of Marie's House. Song, just a woman's song in a house filled with shattered men. It was a genuine gift to them. The whole concept is lovely, especially in 2017.

I won't get into why it took a woman to come into the army, to organize a hospital for USCT soldiers. She wasn't just matron, she turned it from " a roof, dirt and bugs " into a genuine hospital.

Thanks for bringing more of Helen's story, here Jno, much appreciated!
 
From the Library of Congress - Helen L. Gilson, Civil War nurse and head of the Colored Hospital Service
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Helen Louise Gilson, also known as Helen Louise Gilson Osgood, who cared for wounded and dying soldiers at battles including Yorktown, Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Petersburg and advocated for a better hospital for African American soldiers and the creation the Colored Hospital Service, of which she became the head until the end of the war.

Thanks to @JPK Huson 1863 and @John Hartwell for the info in this thread!
 
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Whoa, thank you @Mike Serpa and @John Hartwell ! The more I read of Helen the more clearly you can ' see ' her. Others like her, too, wading into all those shambles for the sake of sheer compassion. What bugs me more and more is not having any idea whatsoever how many women died because they did what they did.

It makes these public memorials to Helen all the more valuable.
 
Her work at Gettysburg: Sanitary Commission representatives Frank B. Fay and Miss Gilson worked in the Third Corps hospitals. The Commission gave a good parting meal to 16,000 wounded. Fay and Gilson departed in August, after the wounded had been transferred to Camp Letterman. (War Papers of Frank B. Fay, Sanitary Commission)
 
Her work at Gettysburg: Sanitary Commission representatives Frank B. Fay and Miss Gilson worked in the Third Corps hospitals. The Commission gave a good parting meal to 16,000 wounded. Fay and Gilson departed in August, after the wounded had been transferred to Camp Letterman. (War Papers of Frank B. Fay, Sanitary Commission)


Did not know Helen was at Gettysburg! No idea how I missed that, thank you!

Was the meal the banquet in September or was there yet another? It sounds awesome but I can't find a lot on it- I ' think ' Sophronia mentions it too? From Adams County Sentinel, late September.
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Oh! I might use her..if I decide to do a first person impression.


She's the first singer I've come across barring accounts here and there of a nurse singing to a patient- accounts where choirs coming in to sing in hospital wards are around but Helen doing her solo work at Mayre's house is the only one I've read? ( which means there probably are others, just haven't bumped into them ).
 
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