Nancy Carey

Pension File: 438800, 505152
P.O.: Charlotte, Michigan
Service: Regimental nurse in Co. G, 105th New York from March, 1862, to March, 1865
Applied: 1890
Status: Accepted (special act)

I like Ancestry and Google far too much.
The fruits of tonight's rabbit hole: one pension file, supplemented with two census records and a very, very unique auto-biographical letter published posthumously by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society.
Nancy Carey was born Nancy Cornell on August 13, 1812 in Lewiston, New York, where her father was stationed at the fort.  On July 17th, 1832, she married C.L. Carey, a missionary amongst the Indians, and began almost thirty years of cross-country adventures.  The way Carey tells it in her letter, her husband was always selling her possessions, especially her horse teams, and moving his family all over the west.  Carey also had to deal with her growing brood of children: seven all told.  Whenever someone was deathly ill, however, they returned to their original home in New York.  Mr. Carey died there in 1850, just a few months after the death of their infant son, David.
The family settled in Tuscarora where her boys finished their schooling.  When the war broke out, 18 boys from the school decided to enlist, including two of Carey's boys, Joseph (22) and Calvin (19).  She doesn't say the reason for her decision, but Carey decided to go with her boys and serve as a nurse for the regiment, meeting them at Alexandria, Virginia in the spring of '62 just a few months after they were mustered in.  She had been there three weeks when she suffered a heat stroke working at the hospital in Warrington, Virginia, and was bedridden for two weeks.  After she recovered, she tried to join her regiment which had moved on to Culpepper, but apparently took a wrong turn.
This is where it gets interesting (and here I'm cursing myself for not having the legislative file because then I could see if she uses this story in her application, and see if she has any proof to back it up!).  The following is quoted in full from a letter Carey wrote to her children before she died, and published by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society:

"They gave me a horse from the corral and I started for Culpepper.  Instead of taking the right hand road, I took the left and rode into Lee's Guerillas.  They said I was a northern woman and I said "Yes, and you are a southern man."  One man reached for my bridle and I wheeled my horse and when I turned and rode away they shot my horse in the flank near Waterloo Bridge.  I jumped from my horse and was captured.  They took me to Lee and Longstreet at Waterloo Bridge.  When they got me there, they bound my hands behind my back.  I remained with my hands bound four days and I was fed by a colored lady, Jenny Mack.  Then I sent for Stonewall Jackson, whom I had known at my old home.  He came and soon as he came he knew me.  He asked where my boys were.  They were at Culpepper.  He ordered my hands untied.  When united, my shoulders and arms were very lame, so he ordered Jenny to bathe me with brandy, while they were getting dinner.  He wrote a letter to Abe Lincoln and I carried it to him.  After dinner we started on horseback, he holding me on my horse, to Strausburg station, there I was to take the cars for Washington.  I got to Washington and stopped at Aurallia Hotel. I sent for Abe Lincoln and he came.  I gave him the letter Jackson wrote.  He treated me very kindly, and while there, he paid my expenses at the hotel.  While there Mr. Lincoln gave me an umbrella, with a compass in the handle, which I prize very highly.  From there I joined my regiment at Culpepper.  I remained with them until after the battle of Antietam.  There is where I met William McKinley..."

The Society also added this to the end of Carey's article:

"Mrs. Carey's father was a Knight Templar, her husband a Mason and she belonged to the order of the Eastern Star.  She knew both Gens. Lee and Longstreet were Masons and was sure they would protect her.  On making her sign to them they both responded and came to her relief, and assuring her captors that she was no spy but a nurse doing work ordered her release."

I'm honestly not sure quite what to make of all this. It's a fabulous story, but I'm skeptical as to how much of it as actually true.  Carey mentions the sunstroke in her pension application.  In fact, she had a doctor, Charles A. Merritt, fill out a surgeon's certificate when she first applied in 1882 which claims that as a result of the sunstroke she lost sight in both eyes.  Merritt wrote at the bottom of the application: "I find the above applicant an old lady not well preserved for one of her years.  Nervous system weak and instable.  Complains of vertigo and pain in head and spine."  I have no idea what kind of long-term effects sunstroke has on the body, but I'm going to see my grandmother this weekend and she should know--she's a retired nurse.  As for the rest of it, they mention she was released by General Jackson in the report put before Congress, so apparently the Pension Committee believed it, as did the rest of Congress, but my eyebrows are still up near the ceiling.  I want hard evidence before I take anything this woman says for granted.  Which is why I am zeroing in on her legislative file when I go back to D.C.
Back to her pension file: Carey applied for a pension in 1882, citing her sunstroke and claiming she was 1/2 disabled (remember, the Bureau was using a graded system where depending on how badly you were disabled you received a certain amount).  The surgeon's certificate she filed with the claim gives us a rough idea of what she looked like: about five feet tall, 126 lbs, brown eyes, brown hair, dark complexion.  It also states that she worked as a nurse after the war--something I haven't been able to confirm using the census records.  In fact, the 1880 has her listed as having no occupation, while her widowed daughter kept house.  Anyway, the application was rejected since Carey had no legal title to a pension at the time.  So Carey started work on a special act.  The act passed in 1890, and Carey received a $12 pension which she drew until her death on August 16, 1909.  Her daughter Etta applied for reimbursement for funeral costs and medical expenses, which was granted, and the file closes.
Which means I need to get my hands on that legislative file!
By the way, the article also mentions that the umbrella Lincoln gave to Carey, as well as a lantern she used in the army, were given to the Historical Society and placed on display.  I shall have to see if they're still there.