Josephine White

Pension: App. 1138733, Cert. 855262
P.O.: 765 Cranstone St., Providence, RI
Service: one of Dix's nurses at Lovell General Hospital, June, 1864-April 15, 1865
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

Another Lovell nurse! I'm a little stuck on Rhode Island nurses at the moment, and they all seem to be working at Lovell.  I promise I'll have another hospital for you next week.
So, Josephine White, born Josephine Hazard on January 18, 1838, in Providence to John and Isabella Hazard, one of four children; still single when she began working at Lovell.  Interestingly, Lovell notes that not only did she work the wards like most of her counterparts, she also served as a surgical nurse, which is something you rarely outside field hospitals where there aren't enough hands to go around and needs must.  Luckily for White she was in both the Treasury and War Department records when she applied for a pension in 1892, so there are no exciting wartime documents to analyze.  Instead, the excitement comes towards the end of her life.
Josephine married Amos. A White, a contractor, in Brockton, on October 29, 1884.  It was her first marriage, and his third.  He died shortly after.  Josephine applied for her pension with the help of James Tanner, claiming that she was unfit to perform any manual labor.  The pension went through without a hitch.  By 1900, White was living with her mother, Isabella Tweed (apparently she'd remarried), her stepson Bendett White, a hardware dealer, his wife, and two African-American servants.  The 1900 Census unfortunately doesn't have any information regarding personal wealth or real estate, but the presence of two servants indicates this was a relatively well-off family.  Josephine, however, must have wanted to keep herself marginally independent, and retained her pension as a separate source of income.  It's not entirely normal (most nurses were in fairly rough financial straits when they applied for pensions), but it's also not entirely unexpected.
Then, in 1918, she decided to take a trip to the Isle of Pines, Cuba, and asked for her pension to be forwarded to her for the duration of the trip.  This did not sit well with the Bureau, which promptly informed her they could not forward her pension.  She was still wrangling with them from her hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida (she must have been determined to have that vacation no matter what!) when she died April 10, 1918.  She and I would have gotten along well.