Almira Ambler

Pension: 601308, 354176 (Special Act)
P.O.: Danbury, Connecticut
Service: Nurse
Applied: 1887
Final Status: Accepted

Almira Ambler was the first legislative file I pulled this week (they do exist!  Success!).  The difference between the pension and legislative files is striking.  Pension files are bureaucracy gone mad: forms, duplicates, forms, affadavits, forms, forms, forms, forms, forms.  They're incredibly useful, but usually lacking in personality.  Legislative files are completely different.
Here's what the pension file on its own told me:

Almira Ambler

Almira Ambler was granted a $20 pension by Special Act of Congress on March 3, 1887, and continued to draw it until her death on June 26, 1891.  She was a volunteer nurse, acting independently of Dix, the Sanitary Commission, and the Christian Commission.  When the Special Act was passed, she was also a widow, her husband E. C. Ambler having died some time previously.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all she wrote--or, at least, all the pension bureau wrote.
Let's add a sprinkling of what I found in the legislative files:
According to a recommendation signed by 19 officers of the 67th Pennsylvania, Ambler and her daughter worked as cooks at the regimental hospital in Philadelphia from December, 1861, to April, 1862; her husband was chaplain of that regiment and she accompanied him to the front.  She also worked at Annapolis, treating paroled prisoners.  Wherever she went, the men loved her.  To them, she was Mother A.  "As such you have been and such I call you and look up to you," one soldier wrote in a '64 letter.  And the men weren't the only ones with praise for Mrs. A.  Anxious parents and family members often wrote to her, or she to them, asking for or giving information as to the whereabouts of a loved one.  Sometimes she even let searchers stay in her home if they couldn't find other accomodations.  A great deal of Ambler's own money went into purchasing supplies and medicine for the men as well.  This became critical when she applied for a Special Act in the late 80s.
Apart from the wonderful accounts of her wartime service, Ambler's folder also revealed some of how her bill made it through Congress.  In a letter from '85, a Mr. Stone informed Mrs. A's husband that it was unlikely his wife's pension bill would be read that session of Congress, and asked if he wanted his wife's papers back.  So, Mrs. A's bill had been in the works for at least two years before it was passed. Also, it was Mr. A rather than his wife who was pushing this forward, since he's the one the letters are all addressed to, and two of affadavits on his wife's work are his, whereas Mrs. A is only the subject of the papers. Also in the folder was part of a bill granting a pension to another nurse, Ann E. Gridley.  At the bottom of the page, someone scribbled: "Please keep this with the papers I sent you.  I think it a precedent for pensioning Mrs. Ambler, and send it to me with the papers next session."  So, there are two new things to consider. One: Mrs. A's bill was in the works for at least two years before it was passed.  Why did it take so long?  And two: what kind of precedent did Ann E. Gridley's pension set?  Was her pension "the beginning"?  Methinks I shall be pulling Ms. Gridley's pension sooner rather than later.