Alice Kelley

Pension File: 601310, 353717
P.O.: 1235 Pennsylvania Ave., D.C.
Service: 5th Corps Field Hospital, Navy Yard
Applied: 1886 (Special Act)
Status: Accepted

Since I've finished the database, I don't have a set system for going through my pensions and posting here, so I'm pulling random files, and double-checking my database as I go.  Tonight's pick is Alice Kelley, one of my special act pensioners.  She also lived on Pennsylvania Ave, right across from the Post Office building--which means I walked by her home practically every single day this summer!
Generally army nurses acted independently of one another or in groups.  If they reported to someone, it was either the hospital doctor, or someone hundreds of miles away.  Kelley, however, worked as personal assistant to Harriet Fanning Read, a well-known army nurse, and a poet.  The two attached themselves to the Fifth Corps in the summer of 1862, and followed the corps through every campaign until September, 1864, when Kelley was ordered to report to the Provost in D.C.  She spent the last few months of the war nursing men at the Navy Yard per the Provost's orders.  And, typically, after that the record goes blank.
Kelley was one of the nurses who managed to get her pension act passed before Senator Cockrell et. co. passed the unwritten rule that nurses could only get $12 pensions.  Because of that, she managed to get $20.  Apparently this wasn't enough, because when Kelley heard that Mary Hill had received a $25 pension in '89 for her service, she demanded an increase, declaring she was "entitled to like pension, and have been from the first allowance."  And to give her claim a little more weight, she had Hill give a statement on her behalf, stating that Kelley's services were "of the precise character of my own...[and that she] very much needs and deserves the relief she asks.  She also had her doctor, Edgar Janney, testify to her inability to support herself.  Then, in case she still didn't have enough support, Harriet Corts, Secretary for the Army Nurses Association, wrote a letter endorsing her (Kelley was apparently a member).  In fact, if I'm right about the hand-writing, Corts actually wrote Hill's testimony (Hill could sign her name, but nothing beyond that), and Kelley's petition (Kelley signed with a mark--probably illiterate).  Networking!
Despite her efforts, Kelley did not receive the increase, and continued to draw the $20 until her death in 1891.  What struck me looking at the date was something one of Kelley's witnesses wrote: "This noble woman is now growing aged, her feebleness is increasing daily; she could not long be a pensioner on the bounty of her country; but if her few remaining years could be made more comfortable by a feeling of independence and the knowledge that at last her services had been recognized by those whom she had served so faithfully and so well in their time of need, then would both justice and charity have been satisfied."  So what was it? (And here I play the cynic).  Was it the fact she could not long be a pensioner?  Or was it charity and justice?  If I can answer that question...well, then I'll have my thesis.  Or part of it, anyway.  So much information!