Union Civil War Nurse from Michigan Annie Etheridge had already been a nurse at a Michigan hospital, and the Civil War provided her the perfect opportunity to continue in that profession. She acted as what today would be called a combat medic, providing immediate medical care to wounded soldiers, often under fire during battle. In addition to nursing, she served the regiment as cook and laundress. Etheridge was one of only two women to receive the Kearny Cross. Lorinda Anna “Annie” Blair was born into a wealthy family on May 3, 1844, in Detroit, Michigan. She was an only child, and her mother died when she was quite young. Soon thereafter, Annie moved with her father to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The…
Category: Civil War Nurses
Civil War Nurses
Cordelia Harvey
Civil War Nurse and Sanitary Agent Cordelia Perrine Harvey (1824-1895) was a Civil War nurse and an agent of the Western Sanitary Commission. She worked throughout the war for Wisconsin’s sick and wounded soldiers and children orphaned by the war. After five visits to the White House she convinced President Lincoln that building military hospitals in the North would allow soldiers to recover much quicker than in the hot putrid climate of the South. Cordelia Adelaide Perrine was born December 27, 1824 in Barre, New York. Not much is known of her early life. The Perrine family moved to Wisconsin in 1842 and owned a prosperous farm in the Kenosha area. Cordelia lived for many years in Kenosha, where she…
Kate Magill Dorman
Catherine Magill Dorman was born in Georgia on October 7, 1828. ‘Kate’ married Arthur Magill in 1844. Seven years later, the couple went to Texas, settling at the seaport community of Sabine Pass. She stood only 4 feet 10 inches tall, but folks learned quickly not to cross her. In 1852, the young couple built an inn they called the Catfish Hotel, adjacent to the waters of the Sabine Pass. The hotel had its own wharf that extended into Sabine Lake from the front of the two-story building, so steamboats could dock and their crews could come in and eat dinner. By 1860, there were 24 permanent guests living in the hotel, as well as the itinerant seamen who lodged…
Hettie Kersey Painter
Hettie Painter, a Civil War doctor, was born in 1821 in Philadelphia, the daughter of Joseph and Charity Kersey Cope. Her parents died when she was young, and she was adopted by her uncle and aunt, Mordecai and Esther Hayes of Chester County, Pennsylvania. They were widely known for their humanitarian work. She married Joseph Painter of West Chester, Pennsylvania. After their wedding, Hattie and Joseph moved to Ohio, where Hettie devoted her time to benevolent works. Hettie and Joseph were supporters of the anti-slavery movement, and their home was always open to fugitive slaves. In 1852, Hettie and Joseph returned east and lived in Philadelphia and later in Camden, New Jersey. During this time she studied medicine, “having had…
Arabella Griffith Barlow
Civil War Nurse and Wife of General Francis Barlow Arabella Griffith Barlow became a Civil War nurse after her husband, Francis Barlow, joined the army in 1861. Barlow began the war as a private in the Twelfth Regiment of the New York Militia. Arabella became attached to the Sanitary Commission in 1862, but nursed her husband back to health after he was wounded several times. She cared for the wounded following several battles, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, but soon her own health began to suffer. Arabella Griffith was born in February 1824 in Somerville New Jersey. She was raised and educated by Miss Eliza Wallace of Burlington, New Jersey, a relative on her father’s side. Francis Channing Barlow was 27…
Kate Cumming
Civil War Nurse from Alabama Kate Cumming is best known for her dedicated service to sick and wounded Confederate soldiers. She spent much of the latter half of the Civil War as a nurse in field hospitals throughout Georgia. In 1866 she published A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the Battle of Shiloh to the End of the War, a record of her day-to-day nursing experiences on the battlefields of Tennessee and Georgia. Cumming was born in 1835 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her family moved to Mobile, Alabama, when she was still a child. Kate quickly adapted to the Southern way of life. Her father was a wealthy Mobile merchant. She and her family were…
Union Nurses of the Civil War
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…
Nursing in the Civil War South
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…
Linda Richards
America’s First Trained Nurse Linda Richards (1841–1930) was the first professionally trained nurse in the United States. Her experiences with nursing her dying mother and her husband, who was wounded in the Civil War, inspired Richards to become a nurse. She was the first student to enroll in the first nurse training school at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1872. She established nurse training programs in the United States and Japan, and created the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients. Linda Richards was born on July 27, 1841, the youngest daughter of Sanford Richards, an itinerant preacher who christened her Malinda Ann Judson Richards by her father, in hopes she would someday…
Georgeanna Woolsey
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…