Tag: educators

Women Who Served as Nurses for the Union Army Soon after the Civil War began, the United States government established the Army Nursing Service and appointed Dorothea Dix as its Superintendent of Women Nurses. The 60-year-old Dix quickly established stringent qualifications for her volunteer nurses. Image: Civil War Nurses Memorial Washington, DC Each nursing candidate had to be “past 30 years of age, healthy, plain almost to repulsion in dress and devoid of personal attractions.” They had to be able “to cook all kinds of low diet” and avoid “colored dresses, hoops, curls, jewelry and flowers on their bonnets.” They could not associate with either surgeons or patients socially, and they must always insist upon their rights as the senior…

Volunteer Confederate Nurses American nursing was still in its infancy at the outbreak of the Civil War. In the antebellum South, women usually served as nurses within their own families. On large plantations, the master’s wife nursed her husband, children, and slaves. Many Southern women were already accustomed to caring for ill patients, and nursing was considered a woman’s duty. Image: Artist’s Sketch of a Civil War Hospital Still, it was not a job that ladies of breeding and stature would volunteer for. The Southern woman was regarded as delicate and modest. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the wounded and dying came pouring in from the battlefields, the South found itself unprepared to care for its casualties. The…

Civil War Nurse from New York Georgeanna Woolsey was young and single when the Civil War began. Shortly thereafter, the Woman’s Central Relief Association – part of the U.S. Sanitary Commission – began organizing a nursing staff. In May 1861 Woolsey was one of one hundred women selected to become a volunteer nurse for the Union Army. With no prior medical training, she was sent to New York for what she called in her diary, “a month’s seasoning in painful sights and sounds.” She was assigned to Washington, DC in July 1861. As fighting intensified, a hospital was set up in Washington, where ‘Georgy’ worked as a nurse. While she was there, she lived with her married sister Eliza Woolsey…

Nurse for the Union Army While serving as a Union Civil War nurse Lucy Bainbridge was called Sister Ohio because she wore the badge of the Ohio Soldiers’ Aid Society. She was given that name by a Union trooper with both arms wounded to whom she brought water and food. She described her experiences on the battlefield in her autobiography, Yesterdays. Lucy Elizabeth Seaman was born in Cleveland, Ohio on January 18, 1842. She was tutored at home until she was nine years old. She then attended grade school, high school, and the Cleveland Female Seminary for one year. She was then transferred to a seminary at Ipswich, Massachusetts. Her extensive education was unusual for females living in that era….

Teacher, Author and Nurse from Michigan Julia Susan Wheelock volunteered as a nurse for the Michigan Soldier’s Relief Association. In newspaper accounts, she was referred to as The Florence Nightingale of Michigan. After the war, she worked as a clerk at the Treasury Department in Washington, DC. Julia was born in Avon, Ohio, on October 7, 1833. When she was four, her father moved the family to Erie, Pennsylvania. Her father died when she was 11 years old, and her mother died when she was 21. Julia then moved to Michigan to be near her brothers, Orville and Chapin. In 1858, she entered Kalamazoo College, majoring in Latin and mathematics. After graduating, she began teaching. In September 1861, Julia’s brother,…

Confederate Nurse at the Battle of New Market Eliza Clinedinst Crim was a young woman living in New Market, Virginia at the time of the Battle of New Market in the Shenandoah Valley on May 15, 1864. Following the long Sunday fight, several of the VMI cadets were taken to Crim’s home, where she fed and cared for them. Crim continued a correspondence with many of the cadets she first met in the aftermath of the battle and became known as the Mother of the New Market Cadets.” Image: Tinted copy of a photo taken circa 1864 Summary of the Battle of New Market: As a part of his spring offensive, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered Federal General Franz Sigel…