USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts in the army and navy during the war of 1861-65, vol II pt 2 > Part 35
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68
Miss Dorothea L. Dix was a native of Worcester, Mass. In early life she became very much interested in prison reforin, at a time when the inmates of penal institutions were shockingly neglected, and were almost wholly at the mercy of unprincipled and unfeeling keepers. She was aided and encouraged in her work by her friend and pastor, Rev. Dr. Channing, of whose children she had been gov- erness. Energetic in character, humane and kindly in spirit, the work grew on her hands, until not only prisoners, but panpers and the insane, were included in her voluntary mission of philanthropy, which she early accepted as the work of her life. In pursuance of it she visited every State in the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, examining prisons, poor-houses and insane asylums, and endeavoring to persuade legislatures and influential people to take measures for the relief of these wretched classes. Her exertions resulted in the establishment of State insane asylums in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana and North Carolina.
.
Only once during her long life did she turn aside from her chosen work. The . war came, and men and women were kindled to a white heat of patriotic devotion. Among the very first to act was Miss Dix, who, self-reliant, and conscious of her
.
595
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
ability for usefulness, started for Washington to offer her services to her country before the first regiments had reached the national capital. She passed through Baltimore the day after the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry had been mobbed in pass- ing through that eity, and her first work on reaching Washington was nursing the wounded soldiers who were the victims of the mob. She was the first woman to engage in work for the relief of wounded soldiers.
On the 10th of June, 1861, Secretary Cameron, at the head of the War Department, appointed Miss Dix " superintendent of female nurses," with sole power to decide upon their qualifications, to direct them in their work and to appoint them to. their places in hospitals. When Secretary Stanton succeeded Secretary Cameron, he ratified the appointment. She installed several hundred nurses in the hospitals, and almost all hospital matrons, who were always entitled to pay from the government when they held appointments from Miss Dix. But as the enlarged operations of the army in the west and south-west and the south greatly increased the demand for women nurses, other superintendents of nurses were appointed at St. Louis, Chicago and Louisville, who detailed them from their own sections of country, accompanied them to the field and located them where they were needed.
Miss Dix put her whole soul into the work. She rented several large houses as depots for the sanitary supplies sent her, as houses of rest and refreshment for nurses and convalescent soldiers ; employed several secretaries in her work ; owned ambulances, and kept them busily employed ; printed and distributed circulars full of help and instruction for her nurses ; maintained a constant visitation of hos- pitals, especially those that were remote and likely to be neglected ; and paid all expenses from her own purse. She pursued her labors to the end, and did not resign her position for months after the close of the war, tarrying in Washington to finish many an uncompleted task for some time after her office was abolished. When all was done she returned to her life-work, in which she remained active and vigorous until death gave her discharge from her labors.
Clara HI. Barton was born in North Oxford, Worcester County, Mass. She was a teacher in her early life, in which profession she had a remarkable but very arduous career. Failing in health, she sought recuperation in Washington, and when she became convalescent a friend obtained an appointment for her in the patent office, which she held for three years. She was the first and at that time the only woman employed in the governmental departments at Washington. She was in that city when about thirty of the wounded men who were victims of the Balti- more mob of April 19, 1861, were carried to the Washington Infirmary for surgical treatment and nursing. Miss Barton proceeded promptly to the spot, a few hours after Miss Dix had begun her humane work among these sufferers of the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry, and remained at her post till the men were able to leave the hospital. This was her induction into the immense work she performed during the war, which cannot even be epitomized here, it was so varied and extensive.
IIer work and its fame grew apace, and she was encumbered with the hospital supplies sent her, the constant stock she had on hand, during the summer of 1862, averaging about five tons. At last General Rucker, the excellent chief quarter- master of Washington, gave her storage for them, and she could then work more systematically. During the long, disastrous peninsular campaign she went to the
596
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
wharves daily, when the transports arrived with loads of suffering men from the swamps of the Chickahominy, her ambulance laden with dressings and restoratives, alleviating their miseries as they were removed to the hospitals. She went with rail- road cars, loaded with supplies, to those wounded in the battles of Cedar Mountain, Chantilly, Fredericksburg and Antietam. She established her headquarters once in a tall field of corn ; at another time, in a barn ; and at Antietam, on the piazza of an abandoned house, working day and night with the shot and shell shrieking around her, her face black as a negro's, and her lips and throat parched with the sulphurous smoke of battle.
She accompanied the Ninth Army Corps from Harper's Ferry to Fredericks- burg, with her wagon train, as a general purveyor for the sick. Her supply of comforts for the men was ample, and it was increased every day by fresh stores, gathered by foragers on the enemy. Every night when they encamped fires were kindled and fresh food and necessities were cooked for the moving hospital. Through all the long and painful march her wagon train constituted the hospital larder and kitchen for all the sick within reach. She accompanied the Gilmore and Dahlgren expedition to James, Folly and Morris islands ; and during the long siege of Fort Wagner, all through the torrid summer, she remained under the fire of the heaviest rebel batteries, devoting herself to the suffering men.
At the close of the war, when the Southern prisons were opened, it was found that thirteen thousand of our brave fellows had died in confinement at Anderson- ville, and were buried within the enclosure. A young Connecticut soldier, himself a prisoner, had obtained a copy of all the records of interments in that field of death, and could identify the graves of most of the dead men. Miss Barton was requested by the Secretary of War to accompany the young soldier to Anderson- ville, and to superintend his work. The prison was laid out as a cemetery, and head-boards, with the name and rank of the dead soldiers, were placed at the graves. About four hundred graves, which could not be identified, were marked with suitable head-boards. A volume would be necessary for a full record of Miss Barton's war services.
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 ser- vice. 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.
Miss Louisa M. Alcott, known to all young readers by the books that she wrote for them, worked in the hospitals until she broke down with hospital fever, from the
597
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
effects of which she never wholly recovered. Her first successful literary effort was the story of her hospital work, published under the title "Hospital Sketches."
Another well-known anthor, Mrs. Helen Hunt (II. H.), a native of Amherst, Mass., performed similar service in a hospital in Rhode Island.
Mrs. Rebecca R. Pomroy of Chelsea, Mass., was another of the heroic women who gave themselves to hospital work. Bereft by death of her husband and a son and daughter, almost at one stroke, she sought comfort in ministering to those who were more heavily weighted with sorrow and suffering than herself. She offered her services as a nurse to Miss Dix, was accepted, and installed in the Georgetown, D. C., hospital. She proved herself so unusual and efficient as to attract the atten- tion of surgeons and of visiting members of Congress. And when sickness invaded the White House, and Mrs. Lincoln and Willie, the second and favorite son of the President, were sick unto death, and a good nurse was unattainable anywhere in the District of Columbia, Mrs. Pomroy was sent by Miss Dix to the stricken house- hold. Willie died, Mrs. Pomroy remaining in charge of the other invalid till she was fully restored, comforting the bereaved President by lier sympathy and kind- ness, and calming and managing the distracted household. She then returned to her work for the soldiers, sometimes in hospitals, sometimes on hospital transports and sometimes in the rear of the battlefield, where the wounded were brought to her for care and protection. After the surrender at Appomattox she came home to rest. Not long, however, for her practical ability was sought for the management of the "Newton, Mass., Home for Orphan and Destitute Girls," where she remained in charge until her recent death.
Miss Emily E. Parsons of Cambridge, Mass., was the daughter of Prof. Theophilus Parsons of the Cambridge Law School, and grand-daughter of the late Chief Justice Parsons of Massachusetts. She obtained admission into the Massa- chusetts General Hospital as a student, to learn how to care for the sick, to dress wounds, to prepare diet for invalids, and to acquire a knowledge of what pertains to a well-regulated hospital. At the suggestion of Mrs. John C. Fremont, the St. Louis branch commission telegraphed her to come at once to that city, where she was greatly needed. At that time every available building in St. Louis was con- verted into a hospital, and was crowded with patients. The same was true of Mound City (near Cairo), Memphis, Quiney, Ill., and all the cities on the Ohio River. Miss Parsons was assigned to the hospital steamer "City of Alton," which plied between Vicksburg and St. Louis, bringing the sick and wounded from the various military posts to whatever hospitals on the river could receive them. After a time she was transferred to Benton Barracks Hospital, St. Louis, where were two thousand patients. She was made superintendent of all the nurses employed there, men and women. She reduced the work to a perfect system, trained the nurses to perform the work allotted them, co-operated with the surgeons in carrying out humane and enlightened plans, and Benton Barracks Hospital became famous for its excellence and the rapid recovery of its patients. At the close of the war she gave her services for some time to the freedmen in the south-west, where her adherence to systematic work, her unfailing cheerfulness and kindness and her power of per- sistence in carrying out her plans, made her as eminent and as useful as she had been in the hospitals.
598
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
Miss Charlotte Bradford of Duxbury, Mass., daughter of Hon. Gamaliel Bradford, began her relief work in the very hardest department. She was assigned to the " hospital transport service." When the army of the Potomac removed from the high grounds about Washington to the swampy and miasmatie region of the peninsula, it caused an outbreak of malarial diseases of a severe character. Very soon there were added to the large list of the diseased a host of wounded men, brought from the sanguinary battlefields in numbers beyond all previous precedents. It beeame absolutely necessary to remove them to the hospitals in and about Wash- ington, if the brave men were to have a chance for recovery. The government authorized the commission to take any of its transports not in actual use for the removal of the sick and wounded from the deadly locality. This it did, fitting them up as hospitals, and assigning to each a corps of ladies, to take charge of the diet of the patients, to assist in dressing their wounds, to cleanse them from the mud of the Chiekaliominy and the gore of battle, and in every way to promote their comfort and recovery.
The work was of the hardest, and called for persistent power of endurance and habitual self-control, united with the utmost tenderness and gentleness. Here Miss Bradford was initiated into the service of the Sanitary Commission. Not a strong woman, nor experienced in the work of nursing, she proved herself equal to the severe occasion. She gained in physical ability, became a most heroic and accom- plished nurse, and remained at her post till her services were no longer needed. Then she was placed in charge of the Soldiers' Home at Washington, where she remained till the close of the war. Iler administration was most beneficent and able, and during the two and a half years that she presided over the Ilome she was the sympathizing friend of thousands of sokliers, who were recovering from sickness or wounds, and to whom she gave cheer and invaluable help.
Mrs. Adeline Tyler, a native of Massachusetts and a long-time resident of Boston, was appointed by Bishop Whittingham of Maryland the superintendent of a Protestant sisterhood, which he had instituted in Baltimore. Its mission was the care of the sick, the relief of want and suffering and the ministration of spiritual comfort. While occupied with the many duties of her position the stormn of war broke in fury over the land, and President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers for the defence of Washington, which was sorely threatened by Southern secessionists. The Sixth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, of which the nucleus was the Lowell City Guards, hurrying through the streets of Baltimore in answer to the call of the President, was assailed by a fierce and angry mob, and many were wounded and some were killed.
The dreadful news reached the ears of Mrs. Tyler, or " Sister Tyler," as she was called, and she hastened to their relief. She found the dead and wounded men in one of the police station-houses, but was peremptorily refused admission by the authorities.
"I am a Massachusetts woman," was her reply, "and if I am not allowed to care for these suffering men from my own State, I shall telegraph Governor Andrew, and inform him that my request is denied."
Her spirited reply produeed an effect that her entreaties had failed to accom- plish, and after a little consultation she was conducted to the upper room, where the
599
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
fallen patriots lay. The two who were dead were uncared for, as were the living, who were severely wounded. Their wounds were undressed ; all had been drugged to keep them quiet ; they were in their uniforms, stiffened with blood; and the broken glass of a bottle, with which one had been beaten, remained in the ghastly wound at the base of the brain, which was constantly irritated by the rough collar of his soldier's overcoat.
It was with difficulty that Mrs. Tyler obtained permission to remove these men to the home of the sisterhood, where they were tenderly nursed till they were able to return to their homes. For her humane work Mrs. Tyler received the personal acknowledgments of Governor Andrew, the President of the Massachusetts Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, while resolutions of thanks were passed by the Legislature and sent her, beautifully engrossed upon parchment and sealed with the seal of the Commonwealth. The Surgeon-General of the United States now urged upon her the superintendence of the Camden Street Hospital in Baltimore, and after a year of service here he removed her to a large and newly established hospital in Chester, Penn., where were a thousand sick and wounded men.
After a year at Chester she was transferred to the Naval School Hospital at Annapolis, filled with poor wrecks of humanity from the prison pens of Anderson- ville and Belle Isle. Mrs. Tyler found in this hospital. such an assemblage of incarnate misery as no language can deseribe. Filth, disease, starvation and cruelty had wrought a ruinous work upon these hapless men. They were emaciated till only the parchment-like skin covered the protruding bones ; many of them had dropped into idioey and Innaey ; most of them were too feeble for any exertion ; and the mothers who bore them could not have recognized them.
Mrs. Tyler had many of the wretched men photographed, in their extreme squalor and emaciation, and the government caused a large number of photographs to be made for distribution in America and Europe. In England and on the Continent it was the fashion to treat the exposures of the atrocities of Southern prisons as sensational falsehoods and libels. But these sun pictures were unim- peachable witnesses to the truth of the shocking disclosures of surgeons and nurses, and compelled public belief in their verity. In the midst of this heart-sickening work Mrs. Tyler broke down, and in the summer of 1864 was obliged to leave her post of duty. She was so prostrated by hospital fever as to render her recovery for a time extremely doubtful. She was sent to Europe by her physician as soon as she began to convalesee, but was prostrated by a return of the fever in Paris, and months later in Lucerne, Switzerland, nor was her health re-established until some time after the close of the war.
Mrs. Stephen Barker, the sister of Hon. William Whiting, an Attorney-General of Massachusetts, and whose husband was chaplain of the Fourteenth Massachu- setts Infantry, accompanied him to the field and devoted herself to hospital nursing and relief, serving in almost every capacity, and identifying herself with the patients under her care.
Mrs. G. T. M. Davis, a native of Pittsfield, Mass., and the wife of a colonel who served with distinction during the Mexican war, resided in New York City during the civil war. She rendered invaluable aid to the soldiers passing through
600
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
New York, and never failed to minister to their comfort at the Soldiers' Rest, where they tarried during their stay in the city. She was a constant attendant and nurse at the hospitals at Bedloe's Island, and also at the large general hospital at David's Island. A large proportion of the supplies from Berkshire County, Mass., found their way to these hospitals, and came under the supervision of Mrs. Davis ; and in her graphic letters to the county papers she never tired of expatiating on their abundance and excellence.
Miss Mary Dwight Pettes was born in Boston, and was a member of a family noted for generations for intelligence and religions and moral excellence. She chose to enter hospital service in St. Louis, rather than in the east, because the work there was severer and less attractive, and few experienced and trained women had then entered that field. We know little of her life in those western hospitals, save what she revealed in her letters to the " Boston Transcript." She assisted in the care of the horribly mutilated and frozen soldiers who were brought from the battlefield of Fort Donelson. She was in the hospitals into which the most severely wounded were brought from the Golgothas of Pittsburg Landing and Pea Ridge. Wherever the need was greatest and the relief work required heroic endurance, there Miss Pettes was found, patient, untiring, forgetful of herself, a benediction and an ever- present help.
"I have never known what human suffering is," she wrote, while caring for the wounded and frozen soldiers of Fort Donelson ; "I have never known what capacities for anguish were enwrapped in the human body, until the victims of the battles of Fort Donelson, Pittsburg Landing and Pea Ridge were placed under my care. What a condensation of horrors is contained in that one word 'war'!" She ministered to others at the cost of her own life. Worn down with work among these dreadful sufferers, breathing steadily the infected air of the tainted wards, she was smitten with typhoid fever, and in the early part of the year 1863 she sank into the arms of death, with words of consolation and sympathy to her patients upon her lips, among whom she fancied herself occupied. Rev. Dr. Eliot of St. Louis sent to the "Christian Register" of Boston, in May, 1863, a beautiful tribute to this noble Boston girl, who, as he truly said, " had died a martyr to the cause of country and liberty quite as much as any of those who fell on the field of battle."
Lack of space forbids mention of many Massachusetts women whose patriotic record during the war was that of unflinching self-sacrifiee and active devotion to . the men who were fighting to maintain an intact and undivided republic.
Mrs. Curtis T. Fenn of Pittsfield, Mass., was a leader in Berkshire County, where the women looked to her as their head and worked under her direction. Dur- ing the war nearly $10,000 worth of supplies from her native county passed directly through her hands to New York, to be used in the hospitals there or forwarded to Washington. She established a resting-place for the weary soldiers passing to and fro through Pittsfield ; and when they came in large numbers, she arranged that the women who worked with her should be called to her assistance by the firing of a gun just before the transport train arrived. Then the soldiers were abundantly fed, their knapsacks were packed with food and their canteens filled with milk, tea or coffee ; when, refreshed and cheered, they continued their journey.
601
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN IN THE CIVIL WAR.
Mrs. Abbie J. Howe of Brookfield, Mass., is deserving especial mention for her untiring devotion to the sick and wounded under her charge. She was one of that brave corps of women who dared serve in the pestilential wards of the Naval School Hospital at Annapolis, Md., which were filled with the released prisoners from Andersonville and other prisons.
After Mrs. Charlotte E. MeKay of Massachusetts had been bereft of her hus- band by the war, and then of her only child by sickness, she sought comfort in ministering to others more hapless than herself. She accepted an appointment under Miss Dix, and began work in the hospital where the wounded were brought from Winchester, Va. She was assigned later to the hospitals in Frederick City, which were filled with the wounded from Antietam. Then she was transferred to the hospitals at Chancellorsville, and while at her work received the sad news that her brother had fallen in battle under General Hooker. Although not far from him, the exigencies of hospital service were such that she could not even institute a search for his dead body or look the last time on his cold face. She was so efficient a worker and leader, having, as General Birney said, "a positive genius for the worst kind of hospital work," that she was sent to Gettysburg after the three days' battle was over. Here she remained until autumn, laboring zealously and success- fully in her hospital, which contained all the time from a thousand to fifteen hun- dred men, until it was merged in another. She remained in the service until March, 1865, when she went to Virginia to take charge of the schools for the freedmen, remaining there a year.
Among other Massachusetts women who were distinguished as workers in field, camp or army hospitals, were the following, most of whom rendered efficient service at Antietam or at the Naval Academy Hospital at Annapolis, among the wretched sufferers from Southern prisons : Miss Agnes Gillis of Lowell, Miss Maria Josslyn of Roxbury, Miss Ruth L. Ellis of Bridgewater, Miss Kate P. Thompson of Rox- bury, Miss Jennie T. Spaulding and Miss Eudora Clark of Boston, and Miss Sarah Allen of Wilbraham, all of Massachusetts. Miss Thompson was rendered an invalid for life by her labors among the released prisoners. Miss Sophia Knight of South Reading, Mass., served in the western Sanitary Commission, where the need was very urgent and the work most arduons. At the close of the war she accepted an appointment from the New England Freedmen's Aid Society as teacher of the colored people on Edisto Island, South Carolina, in which work she was engaged for many years.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.