Elizabeth S. Ward

Pension: 1130368, 920782
P.O.: 23 Loan and Trust Building, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Service: worked as a dietician at Foundry Transfer Hospital in Louisville from October, 1864, to January, 1865; transferred to Wilson General Hospital, Nashville, and served from January to May, 1865
Applied: October, 1892
Status: Accepted

There is a special circle of frustration reserved for research involving US Christian Commission dieticians like Elizabeth Ward.  These women perfectly encapsulate the dichotomy of female workers during the war--they were technically members of the military, yet they performed traditional feminine tasks, in this case running the special diet kitchens.  The woman who created the job, Annie Wittenmyer, called the women dieticians, or sometimes nurses.  Mostly, the rolls listed them as cooks.  Given the issues surrounding gender during the pension application process (who qualified as a nurse/who can be counted as part of the military depended in part on your job title and if it was feminine rather than professional), and the fact that they were hired by a woman with no formal title, you can just imagine the trouble these women faced in the years following 1892.  And given just how adamant Wittenmyer was in defending her work and the women who worked for her, it's a safe bet there's a lot to talk about in a pension case involving a dietician.
A bit of background: proposed by Annie Wittenmyer in December, 1863, the special diet kitchens were, in Wittenmyer's words, meant to "reform the system of cookery in the US military Hospitals, which was the most defective of any part of the service."  Given that soldiers likely had little experience cooking for themselves prior to the war, and the rather limited knowledge of nutrition at the time, I'm not entirely surprised the food situation was such a mess.  The special diet kitchens  would prepare food for the very sick or severely wounded, "who often needed food delicately prepared, more than medicine."  The proposal was widely applauded and immediately put into practice in general hospitals across the north, and Wittenmyer was charged with finding women to run the kitchens.
Elizabeth Ward, or Libbie, as she was called, was one of her choices.  Ward wrote to Wittenmyer in August, 1864, offering her services, Wittenmyer accepted, and sent her a train ticket.  Ward reported for duty at Foundry Transfer Hospital on October 1.  She worked at Foundry until January 28 the following year, when she was transferred to Wilson General Hospital, also known as No. 6, in Nashville.  Wilson General Hospital was a colored hospital, and according to Wittenmyer, Ward was transferred there "because she was willing to work in a Hospital for sick and wounded Colored soldiers."  Jane Schultz argues in her book, Women at the Front, that white nurses achieved fairly "egalitarian" relations with the colored troops under their care.  Wittenmyer's choice of words, however, suggests that while Ward likely fit that description, not everyone was on the egalitarian bandwagon.  Ward worked at Wilson alongside two fellow nurses/dieticians, Mrs. Purington and Mrs. Sallie A. Marion, before she came down with typhoid in April, and was sent home, ending her army career.
Ward never married.  Following the war, she lived with her parents in Bristol, Wisconsin, while working as a dressmaker.  When they died, she moved back and forth between siblings--in fact, she shows up twice in the 1900 Census, living with both her sister's family, and her uncle.  She continued work as a dressmaker, though according to her testimony she was barely able to support herself by then.  She was known to the Woman's Relief Corps--she appears on their list of nurses, and has a brief entry in Our Army Nurses--and it's likely that this connection to the WRC, coupled with her connection to Annie Wittenmyer and her need for an income, prompted her to apply for a pension in 1892.
The major stumbling block was, since Wittenmyer had hired Ward, whether or not Wittenmyer was considered a competent authority--did she have the power to hire nurses?  Luckily, Fred Ainsworth, the head of the Records and Pension Division, and Surgeon General Sternberg ruled that Wittenmyer was a competent authority--they did not always agree on this point, and it got nasty at least once before they sorted things out--so Ward received her pension in 1896.  She continued to draw it until her death in February, 1914, at the age of 75.
Apart from the debate over Wittenmyer's authority, and the commentary on nursing colored troops, what I found striking about this application was Wittenmyer's appeal to the Bureau on Ward's behalf.
I have a small-scale obsession with Annie Wittenmyer.  Because of her work with the Army Nurses Pension Act (she nearly pushed the bill through single-handed), and her subsequent work as a pension agent, she appears fairly frequently in the pensions I study.  Her letters to the Bureau are always the highlight of a pension file.  Her testimonials, for instance, add details about a nurse's service that I wouldn't get otherwise--the description of Ward's work at Wilson GH comes from a letter Wittenmyer sent to the Bureau Commissioner.  And to back up her recollections, she mentions the dozens of wartime letters and records she has--eight volumes of which are preserved in Des Moines!  Jackpot!
Anyway, Wittenmyer was an outspoken woman, and a staunch advocate for the women who had worked for her.  The fact that she was, to all intents and purposes, a pension agent in a period where only a handful of women worked in law is testimony to her character and commitment.  Yet in Ward's application she has a change in voice, if you will.  Given the number of ex-dieticians applying for pensions at the time, and the controversy I mentioned surrounding their applications, Wittenmyer felt it prudent to explain herself and her work to the Bureau Commissioner.  And this forthright woman ended her letter with an apology: "I am very sorry to be thus obliged to write of myself, or work, but I feel you will generously credit it to my zeal for the best interest of the Army Nurses, hundreds of whom I know personally. I secured the passage of the Army Nurses Pension Act of Aug 5, 1892 and have for two years worked for them without one cent of salary, and I desire on their account that you should understand the facts."
This was not an uncommon attitude; in fact, it was the norm, and had been since before the Civil War, for women involved in benevolent work.  A number of nurses also expressed similar discomfort when discussing themselves and their work when they wrote to the Bureau regarding their pensions.  But it was not what I expected from Wittenmyer, a woman whose life's business was to put herself out there at the head of new, ambitious projects.  Yet she was, in her own way, conservative. For instance, she served as head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union until Francis Willard proposed adding women's suffrage to the WCTU's goals, at which point Wittenmyer left and founded the Non-Partisan WCTU, which concentrated solely on prohibition.  Her apology to the Commissioner echoes that more conservative/traditional stance--and serves as a reminder to me.
Wittenmyer is a fascinating, complex woman, and she and her work embody so much of the gendered controversies of the time.  Fingers crossed there are more files like Ward's, or there's a road trip to Iowa in my future, because I don't think we can understand the dramatic changes in gender roles underway in the US in the late 19th century, and the Civil War's role in those changes, without understanding this woman.  And I don't think I've even brushed the surface.

Phebe Farmer

Pension File: 1138498
P.O.: Cureall, Missouri
Service: volunteer nurse at New Orleans
Applied: 1892
Status: Rejected

Today I started going through the nurses from the US Christian Commission.  There aren't many, just 9 out of the 179 files I have from after the ANPA.  Turns out there are actually 7--I misidentified two of the women, of which one was Farmer.  I was going to post another USSC nurse for you tonight, but I decided I wanted her story to go up instead.
From what I found in the file, Farmer was an intelligent woman who had a rough life.  She lived somewhere in the vicinity of New Orleans when the war broke out.  Her cousin and several other relatives joined the Confederate army, but she herself was born in Massachusetts and remained loyal to the North, as did her family.  Shortly after the war began they fled to New Orleans, where they waited out the war.  Apparently, General Banks issued an order preventing women from nursing in New Orleans hospitals (something I haven't corroborated yet), but Farmer still wanted to help, so she used her contacts in several Massachusetts regiments to have men sent from the hospitals to her home where she could tend to them herself.  She also arranged for her daughter to take one or two baskets of food a day to St. James Hospital.  This, she claimed, did the most good, since the food there killed more men than the bullets.  Farmer's husband also helped the Union war effort, though not in a medical capacity.  Apparently he knew the bayous and swamps better than most, and volunteered to help guide Bank's men through the area during the Red River campaign.  This, of course, made him very unpopular, and he disappeared sometime in 1867.
Thirty years later, Farmer was barely scrapping by, earning $1 a week at the local post office, so she put in a claim for a pension.  By her own admission she had more faith in a special act from Congress than in the ANPA due to the nature of her service, but her daughter as well as Annie Wittenmyer (apparently Farmer was a member of the WRC) and George B. Lowd (a former patient and now editor of the Home and Country magazine) urged her to apply under the ANPA.  Honestly, she'd have been better off not listening to Wittenmyer (I can't believe I'm saying it either), because as a volunteer nurse who had done the majority of her work at her home, not only did Farmer not appear on the rolls, she didn't even fall under the ANPA.  So the Bureau rejected her.  Even her connection to President Harrison was no help--the Harrison's were apparently old family friends.  But somehow I don't think it phased her.
Best news yet today: a quick google search turned up her daughter's papers at Louisiana State University.  I am putting in a request for those.  Right now.

Sarah Bloor

Pension File: 1140274, 867464
P.O: 408 Olive Street, Kansas City, Missouri
Service: Christian Commission Agent in Diet Kitchens at Gayoso Hospital
Applied: December 5, 1892
Status: Accepted

Sorry for the late post--midterm season just started here and I've been juggling that and writing my rough draft for the past few days.  Here's another random file for your perusal.

Sarah Bloor, born 1817, widowed by 1883, at least one sister.  She began her work midway through the war--one of the documents has her starting in 1863, but both she and the War Department records both claim she started in June, 1864.  Bloor worked in the special diet kitchen at Gayoso Hospital, Tennessee--diet kitchens were Annie Wittenmyer's creation (love this woman) and were essentially what they advertised themselves as: special diet kitchens which produced food specifically for hospital patients.  There are actually what appear to be menus of a sort in Bloor's file (shown right).  Has anyone ever seen things like this before?  It looks like the surgeon (or perhaps the nurse and surgeon) went through the ward, decided what each man needed for the day, and then sent the order off to the diet kitchens.  Some of the things on there look absolutely fantastic, like the chocolate for breakfast.  Others not so much.  One of the entrees is gelatine.
No thanks.
Anyway, Bloor's file doesn't reveal a mustering out date, or any information on her life between then and the time she applied for a pension--for once, Ancestry has yielded nothing other than her presence in the Kansas City directory, which is how I know she was widowed.  Bloor applied for her pension in December, 1892, and appointed local attorney J.A. Hays to take charge of her claim--remember, lawyers could not legally claim a fee for working on these cases.  These had to be pro bono.  By now, Bloor was 75 years old and suffering from old age and rheumatism, so well within the purview of the ANPA.
Isn't there always a catch?
The War Department records showed Bloor was attached to Gayoso in June, 1864, but didn't show a date of discharge, so they asked Bloor for original documents to prove the length of service.  So, she sent them the beautiful original documents I mentioned before.  Only problem was, the Bureau wasn't sure that Annie Wittenmyer had the authority to appoint nurses.  So off went a flurry of letters to the Surgeon General, who responded, "In view of the fact that the instructions from the Secretary of War and the Surgeon General to Medical Directors and surgeons in charge of General Hospitals conferred authority upon Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, Special Agent of the U.S. Christian Commission, "to employ such ladies as she might seem proper upon the request of U.S. surgeons," I am of the opinion that she was not thereby given any independent right to employ nurses." (That's a cue to me to double check the documents I have from the Bureau re Wittenmyer and the diet kitchen nurses, because I know at some point they make exceptions for diet nurses.)  But, the affidavit of Acting Assistant Surgeon Sharp did constitute proof of service under competent authority, so Bloor's claim was allowed.  Bloor continued drawing her pension until her death in January, 1897 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.

Mary A. Huff

Pension File: 1133684, 815217
P.O.: Nova Scotia
Service: Nurse at Carver Hospital, D.C.
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

I know I promised you Mary Walker, but her papers are a two-day project.  So, in the interim, I pulled out Mary Huff's file.
Mary Huff is one of those wonderful occasions where someone kept track of who served at the hospital, and the War Department managed to find it.  She served at Carver Hospital in Washington, D.C. from October 17th, 1864, to June 3rd, 1865 alongside a number of other women whose pension files I pulled, like Mary A. McKee, Waitie Harris, and Sarah Cowgill.  The catch (it's not a real blogpost if there wasn't a catch): the rolls listed her as a cook, which meant she didn't fall under the 1892 Act.  She was also no longer a resident of the US.  There's nothing in the file on the problems created by Huff living in Canada. There is, however, tons on the problem created by listing her as a cook.
In fact, it looks like the Bureau had a minor meltdown.  Huff's file is full of official letters, briefings, and legal decisions centered on the specifics of the 1892 Act.  I promise I'll try to keep the legalese to a minimum.
There were two major problems.  By 1892, many surgeons and stewards who could testified to a woman's service were dead, and nurses had to rely on the testimony of enlisted men and nurses.  The issue here was whether or not that testimony was sufficient to establish service under a competent authority.  The other problem was the exact status of the women who worked for Annie Wittenmyer in the special diet kitchens, since they served both as nurses and cooks--cooks, of course, being completely left out of the 1892 Act.
Hoke Smith, the Secretary of the Interior at the time, made the final legal ruling.  The "fact of service," or whether or not a woman served as a nurse under competent authority, could be proved by any competent witness, including enlisted men and nurses.  However, they did not have authority to employ nurses.  Self-explanatory.  As to the women employed by Wittenmyer,

"the dietary nurse sustains a relation to a patient which is much akin to that of a medical adviser.  Physicians are themselves constantly urging the efficiency of diet as a safeguard against disease as well as a remefy therefor.  It requires intelligence as well as delicate knowledge of the nature and effect of certain foods to fit a woman for such a position.  They often have, for this, a peculiar fitness, and the services rendered by such women are invaluable and entitled to great consideration."

Therefore, Smith considered their pensionable status under the Act "unquestionable."
There were also two substantial "opinions."  As dull as it sounds, the briefs answered some of the questions I kept asking as I went through the files.  One brief, an Opinion in re Nurse Pension Act acknowledged just how difficult it was to establish a nurse's service using service records or testimony.  Some times, no evidence could be found, and other times the record listed women as cooks, laundresses, waitresses--positions other than nurses, as was the case with Mary Huff.  They were listed as such, the opinion stated, "presumably in compliance with a request from the Surgeon General's Office, that [because] a larger number of nurses had been accepted in the Department...than had been intended," they should be listed under another name, but given the same pay.  The problem here was finding evidence to controvert the records.  Then there was my favorite: sometimes the records showed a woman paid for less than the required six months (usually because the records were spotty or the women signed vouchers allowing the Surgeon to draw their pay to buy things for the soldiers), but the woman claimed more than six months service.  And then there were the people whose homes were used as hospitals and they themselves worked as nurses.
What to do, what to do?
Here's the short answer.  Yes, you can get a pension if you are listed as something other than a nurse, so long as you can deliver proof and were appointed by a competent authority.  So, if you were listed as a cook, laundress, or opened your house, as long as you actually nursed, you come under the Act.  No, you can't deny a pension based solely on payment records (or lack thereof).  Payment records are only corroborative evidence.
So why do payment records still have so much 'oomph' in later records?  And why are Wittenmyer's nurses still having issues getting pensions a few years later?  In short, why do they make a somewhat hasty retreat on all these decisions within months?!

Rachel A. Allen

Pension File: 377901
PO: Warsaw, IL, and later Anthony, KS
Service: Keokuk GH
Applied: 1880
Final Status: Accepted, 1893
Rachel A. Allen applied for a pension on June 17, 1880--twelve years before the Army Nurses Pension Act was passed.  She claimed that she served as a nurse at the Estes House Hospital in Keokuk, Iowa from the fall of 1862 until the spring of 1864 and was now permanently disabled and unable to make a living.  In her 'Declaration for an Original Invalid Pension,' Allen claimed a pension for "blood poisoning, chronic diarrhea and sequence chronic (hepatitis), liver disease and disease of the heart and lungs," all as a result of blood poisoning and diarrhea contracted during her service.
Ouch.
My first thought was that some of this, particularly the heart and lungs, could be attributed to age.  If someone paid me a quarter for every time a 75 year old nurse put down general disability as the reason why she couldn't work, I'd never have to pay for copying.  The Declaration, however, also listed physical attributes.  When this was written (1880), Allen was 45 years old.
Her pension finally came before the review board two years later--at which point they rejected her claim on the grounds that "the claimant was a civil employee and not enlisted in the military service of the U.S. and there is no law allowing pensions for disease contracted while acting as nurse."
That seems to be a common problem: if the applicant was not actually enlisted in the army as a nurse, there was no legal precedent, and the Pension Committee was extremely hesitant to broaden the rules.  Allen, apparently, was a gutsy person, or desperate for funds.  After the Pension Act in '92, she applied again, and this time she had Backup (yes, the capital 'B' is on purpose).  If you don't know the name of Annie Wittenmyer, shame on you.  During the war, Wittenmyer organized diet kitchens in Northern hospitals, and probably saved hundreds of lives by actually feeding the men something other than hardtack and salted pork. After the war, not only was she a member of the WRC (Woman's Relief Corps, which was one of the groups supporting the Pension Act), she served as attorney for dozens of would-be pensioners.  I don't know how she did it, but Allen got Wittenmyer to act as her attorney.  The pair of them got their hands on half a dozen affidavits from men she'd treated as well as surgeons and staff on duty at the hospital (including Esther J. Boone, another woman on my list!); and, somehow, the Pension Bureau managed to get its act together and find records indicating Allen had, in fact, worked at Estes House (the record keeping in these places! Sheesh!).  Allen got her pension: $12 a month, the going rate for nurses pensions.
Allen never married--a fact emphasized in the affidavits and applications.  Eventually, as age caught up with her, she moved in with her nephew, F. O. Allen, and his wife.  She died in March, 1913, in Anthony, Kansas.  The remainder of the papers in the pension file document her nephew's application for reimbursement for the care he'd given his aunt.  He got $14.50; he'd asked for $115.