Elizabeth Tuttle

Pension File: 762083, 480886
P.O.: Colebrook, Ohio
Service: nurse in Dix's nursing corps
Applied: 1888
Status: Accepted (Special Act)

I am ready for a vacation.  Lucky me, Fall break starts this Friday (W&M is strange like that, we don't get the usual Monday holidays off, we get a Monday and Tuesday "break"), so I am heading up to Gettysburg tomorrow night to enjoy my couple of days off...and do work.  Lots of work.  There are a number of nurses who I have legislative files for, but no pension files, and a couple who I have pension files for but no legislative files, so I'm heading in to D.C. on Friday to fix that.  It may carry over into Monday if I have too many files to pull, but I'm hoping not.  And when I'm not in D.C., I'll be catching up on school work and writing chapter one of this behemoth.  But at least Gettysburg is the perfect place to work on this, and I get home cooking...
Gotta earn it first.  Alright, Elizabeth Tuttle: busy, busy woman.  Nothing in the census records yet, but there are some papers at the Lilly Library at Indiana University which I'm having photocopied and sent to me.  Tuttle started her nursing career at Locust Spring Hospital in Keedysville, Maryland, just after the Battle of Antietam as one of Dix's nursing corps.  Apparently she cared for men from both sides, because her file contains a letter from General Cox acknowledging the receipt of her note.  Her note had accompanied the letter of a Georgian prisoner, and she wanted the General to ensure it reached its destination--this he promised to do.  Tuttle was transferred to Harper's Ferry in December, where she supervised the cooking department, and then to Camp Letterman after Gettysburg.  She stayed there until Letterman was closed down in November, and then headed west per Dix's instructions to work for Mr. Yeatman (he headed the Western Sanitary Commission).  She worked as matron of the linen rooms in General Hospital No. 2 in Chattanooga, then transferred to No. 1 on January 10th, 1865.  Tuttle was finally relieved of duty on September 18th, 1865 and went home to Philadelphia, at which point we lose her story until 1888 when she applied to Congress for a special act.
Apparently Mary Bickerdyke was the lead on Tuttle's case.  She filed the paperwork, and Tuttle wrote to her asking about her bill's progress, and once making corrections when the bill called her Miss Tucker instead of Miss Tuttle.  Apparently Tuttle was living alone with her mother--who was 95 years old--and Tuttle's health was rapidly failing.  "Nothing but need," she wrote, "would induce me to--well hope I may be excused for my impertunity [sic]."  That was in mid 1888.  Congress gave Tuttle a $12 pension, but it took them 2 years to get around to it.
Tuttle file is a wonderful example of networking between army nurses.  Tuttle has Bickerdyke for her attorney--and at the same time Bickerdyke is also working on the claim of Harriet Dada Emens, another nurse.  Despite the fact that Bickerdyke did work as a pension and claims agent, I've never seen Bickerdyke get involved in a pension before--I'm hoping the letters from Indiana U will give me some information on how she got wrapped up in all this.  Bottom line, however: Tuttle and Emens are getting in touch with a fellow former nurse rather than a lawyer--something that doesn't happen so much post-1892.  This is definitely going in chapter one.
I think I've earned at least one home cooked meal, no?