Amanda Stokes

Pension File: 485143, 243304
P.O.: Lebanon, Ohio
Service: regularly commissioned nurse, serving primarily in Tennessee
Applied: 1883
Status: Accepted (special act)

I was plowing through files today to flesh my first chapter and pulled Stokes's file.  It's a thin file--since hers was a special act the pension file itself is depressingly sparse, and the legislative file is one letter asking for her papers to be returned, so, of course, nothing there.  But when I googled her name to see if she had a file somewhere elsewhere or maybe a published memoir, I got several hits for a DUV post named for her out in her native Ohio.  All of the sites have extensive biographies on Stokes, but there was no mention of her pension file, so here is my small contribution based on what I gleaned from her files.
Amanda Stokes was working as a school teacher in Ohio when the Civil War broke out.  She volunteered her services almost immediately through her local Representative, Thomas Corwin, and was commissioned in the fall of 1861.  The file doesn't list specifically where she served, but does state she spent most of her service in Tennessee.  As a commissioned nurse, Stokes was technically supposed to be paid, but, as her senate report put it, "because of the ignorance or carelessness of the surgeons in making the necessary reports of their employes [sic]" she often went without (did you expect anything less?).  When she was paid, she used that money to purchase delicacies for the wounded she tended. All very typical.
None of the women who applied for special acts before the push for the ANPA began in 1886 escaped the war without some sort of physical scar.  Stokes wasn't captured or injured by shot or shrapnel like some of her fellow petitioners, but she definitely did not come out better for it.  In March, 1865--one month before the war ended! She was this close to getting out unharmed!--Stokes and another hospital nurse loaded themselves and a patient into an ambulance wagon and set off from Knoxville to Lookout Mountain.  To get there, they had to cross a river, and on this particular day the waters had risen, almost completely immersing the bridge.  The ambulance driver apparently thought he could make it and urged the team onward...and off they went over the edge.  Down went the wagon into the mud, with the occupants fighting to get free.  Luckily everyone managed to get to shore--several soldiers on the nearby shore pushed a log into the water so that Stokes could grab onto it and float to safety--but apparently Stokes's near-death experience left her deaf in one ear, and in her petition she complained of rheumatism and neuralgia in her head and neck, which she claimed were the result of the accident.
Which brings us to her special act.  Again, very little.  We know her application was accepted on May 31, 1883, and she was granted $15 a month.  At the time she was 60 years old, 5'2", with auburn hair and black eyes.  She died only two years later.
Like I said, there are some very detailed biographies out there on this woman--one of them even as a picture of her--so if you want more details, I highly suggest you look them up.  Otherwise, I am off to tackle chapter one (rough draft due tomorrow!).  Probably no update tomorrow night--it's homecoming here and my room is right next to party central, so I doubt I'll be able to hear myself think, let alone do work.  Until Monday!