Electa Willard

Pension: 1133884, 1078866
P.O.: Detroit, Michigan
Service: agent for the Michigan agency for wounded and sick soldiers; also St. Mary's Hospital, Detroit
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

Sorry for not posting in over a week--I was up to my eyebrows in prep work for a re-enactment, and I spent the last two days trying to recover.  The downstairs still looks like a disaster area, but today I am finally back in the swing of things--which means my desk is clean, the desktop is hooked up, my files are (semi) organized, and most important, I have the energy to work.
I went through the "W" pension folder today, plugging information into the Database.  Amongst all the women, Electa's file stood out.  It wasn't just the unique name (though I admit it was one of the reasons I decided to pull her pension in DC--it's just such a cool name!), it was the date her pension commenced: 1904.
Every pensioneer I pulled applied for a pension before 1892.  That was one of the groundrules I went into this with.  So the 1904 date had bells going off in my head.  The thing with pension files is that there's ususally no rhyme or reason as to how the papers are organized.  Sometimes they're ordered chronologically--it's a very rare sometimes.  Willard's file was organized chronologically...but backwards.  So the more recent papers were on top, and the older were on the bottom.  And I started at the top.
A couple of "no, duh" moments later, here's Electa Willard:
When the war broke out, Governor Blair of Michigan commissioned Luther Willard to help supply and care for wounded Michigan soldiers by securing donations from private citizens, and seeing that they were put to good use.  Electa, for whatever reason, decided to accompanied her husband.  What happened to their three daughters (one them somewhere under the age of 1) is unclear.  Electa, however, spent the vast majority of the next four years time distributing supplies at St. Mary's Harper Hospital; by 1863, she was a defacto nurse.  Luther and Electa continued to work until the close of the war in '65.
With the war over, Luther and Electa returned home.  Electa had another child in 1868--a girl as well--and Luther got a job as a printer.  Luther, however, passed in 1877.  Judging from the census records Electa wasn't in desperate need of money, but in May of 1892 she applied for a nurses pension--just before the Act passed.  That didn't get very far--the War Department couldn't find any record of her service.  When the Act passed, later that year she applied again, citing her service at St Mary's Hospital.  For some reason, Willard abandoned the claim shortly after, but she applied again in 1898.  This time she had a list of names: surgeons, fellow nurses, patients.  Again, however, there was the problem that the War Department had no record of her service, and most of the people Willard cited were dead.  The claim went nowhere.  So, Willard resorted to other means to secure her pension: my favorite, the Special Act.
In 1904, Congress awarded Electa Willard a pension of $12 a month, arguing that her case came "within the spirit, if not the letter, of the army-nurse act," and citing her poor health and needy financial circumstances.  I think, however, that Willard was keeping something from the esteemed body, because in 1911, when she died, the reimbursement claim filed by N.F. Hamilton stated that her home was worth $4000, and that Willard had $3000 in notes.  Something doesn't add up here, and for once it's not because of the Bureau...