Etta Hubbs

Pension File: 1086800, 544771
P.O.: Carthage, Illinois, then Lebanon, Oregon
Service: worked in the diet kitchen at Hickory Street Hospital, St. Louis
Applied: 1891
Status: Accepted (Special Act)

Etta Deuel was born January 22, 1838, in Ashtaula County, Ohio.  On November 4, 1856, when she was just 18, she married Jared F. Hubbs in Ionia, Michigan.  Things were on track for a long, quiet life together--their son Luther was born in 1860--and then the war broke out.  Jared enlisted in Co. D, 3rd Michigan Cavalry, and like so many others caught typhoid fever.  He was sent to Hickory Street Hospital in St. Louis, where his wife joined him to nurse him back to health (and what about little Luther?!).  Etta worked at Hickory Street from September, 1862 to July, 1863.  She started her work in the wards tending to her husband, but presumably as he recovered she began to work in the diet kitchen.  The work, however, began to take a toll on her, and that July she was ordered to take a vacation.  Her husband had been transferred to the 17th Veterans Reserve Corps, Co. D, and was out of any medical danger, so Etta returned home.
Jared made it through the rest of the war in one piece, and the couple moved to Carthage, Illinois, where they had two more children, Emma and Arthur, and Jared got work as a teamster, and then as an express agent at the local train station.
But then Jared's health began to fail.  Jared applied for, and received, a pension in 1890--a whopping $4, which was, apparently, all the money coming in at one point.  Etta's letters to the Bureau reveal her frustration and desperation: "is there anything that can be done for me," she wrote in October. "We both rendered the best service we could."
Turned out there was. My bet is the Woman's Relief Corps tipped her off, because when Etta applied for a nurse's pension, it was with the WRC backing her claim.  In case that wasn't enough, Etta also had affidavits from former patients, a surgeon she had worked for, and several notables in Carthage.  Congress granted her a $12 pension in February, 1891.  Not much, but better than $4.
That seems to have worked for a while.  Eventually Jared and Etta moved to Oregon to live with their daughter Emma and her brood, and in 1912 Jared received a pension increase to $30--it looks like some time in the intervening years he'd lost several fingers on one hand!  It looks like it was the start of a downward swing for Jared though, because he died on August 4, 1914.  Etta lost no time applying for a widow's pension, which paid a little more than her nurse's pension.  It took her a while to get the claim through--she'd lost her marriage certificate , and there was no one old enough to remember her marriage to Jared all the way back in 1856.  It took the Bureau almost two years to the day to approve Etta's claim, but approve it they did.
I was struck going through this file by Etta's letter to the Bureau--"we both rendered the best service we could."  Consciously or not, Etta grouped her work in the hospitals in the same category as her husband's military service--not normally something you see in a period where nurses were increasingly portrayed as idealized, ministering angels separate from the trials and tribulations of army life.  And when she died in 1923, Etta continued that trend.  Rather than buy a generic stone marker, her daughter-in-law applied for a military headstone, to go alongside Jared's.  It may have been in part a financial decision, but it was also a statement about this woman and how she chose to identify herself: that regardless of her gender, Etta Hubbs was a former member of the US Army, and a veteran, and no one was going to place her on a pedestal and put a halo on her head.  This stone was for a woman, and not for an angel.

Hubb's gravestone in Lebanon, Oregon.  From Find a Grave.

Elizabeth Dodge

I bet you thought I missed a day.
It was MLK/Inauguration Day.  I took the day off.  I'm not that obsessed with my work.
No, really, I'm not.
Really.

Pension File: 1001137, 562603
P.O.: San Bernadino, CA
Service: Chester St. Hospital, Philadelphia; Sanitary Lodge, Philadelphia
Applied: 1891
Status: Accepted (Special Act)

One of the chapters of my thesis is dedicated solely to the WRC's efforts to get the Army Nurses' Pension Act passed.  There isn't a great deal out there in the way of WRC records, but every once in a while I find a letter in one of my pension files from Sarah Fuller or Kate Sherwood (members of the Pension Committee), and they are enormously helpful.  When I found the WRC letter in Dodge's file though I was in the middle of finishing the database and I came back to it over break when I was working on the ANPA chapter.
Dodge came from a military family.  Her father, Samuel Rinker, served in the Continental Navy, and then in the War of 1812.  Her brother also served in the Navy, though the records aren't clear which war he served in.  Dodge herself apparently served as a nurse in New Orleans during the Mexican War.  Of course, she couldn't stay out of the next major conflict.  During the winter of 1861-62, Dodge worked at the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon in Philadelphia, funded by the wealthier citizens of Philadelphia to feed troops marching through the city on their way to the front.  She then served eleven months at Chester Street Hospital in Philadelphia, from May 21, 1864, to mid April, 1865, when she was offered a position as matron of the Sanitary Lodge in that city, a position which she took and held until August.  When this hospital closed, Dodge got a position as matron at the Naval Asylum Hospital.
The position must not have lasted long, because Dodge moved out to Sacramento, California shortly after--the dates are very unclear, but she was certainly out there by 1873, when her husband, Seymour Dodge, passed (I haven't been able to puzzle out when they were married exactly, but it was sometime in the 1850s).  Dodge managed to find odd jobs nursing to keep herself financially afloat, but in 1890 she reached out to her local WRC Post for help.
I don't know why, but California's WRC posts were always very enthusiastic in supporting former nurses.  They certainly rallied around Dodge.  They filled out a WRC "Army Nurse Blank" for her--part of the WRC's campaign to get nurses pensioned was to investigate the claims themselves and then put select information on a formal blank: dates of muster and discharge, state of health, pecuniary circumstances, endorsed by, etc.--and had Sarah Fuller, Secretary of the National Pension and Relief Committee, write to Rep. Samuel Yoder to ask him to introduce Dodge's bill.  Fuller and Yoder were both more concerned with the state of the ANPA at the time (it was due up in the House, and Fuller wanted it passed in time for the WRC National Convention), but Yoder eventually put Dodge's bill forward, and it passed on March 3, 1891.
There's little else in the file.  Dodge entered the St. Agnew Asylum in San Francisco in 1904, which necessitated a great deal of paper work--her pension now went to her legal guardian, Daniel McGinley, rather than her.  Dodge died just after the Great Earthquake of San Francisco, possibly from injuries sustained during the quake, on April 21, 1906.

Margaret J. Fletcher

Pension File: 770636, 501987
P.O.: Harrisburg, Illinois
Service: 80th Illinois; Hospital No. 3, Lebanon, and Hospital No. 20, Louisville, from 1862-1864; Perryville
Applied: 1889
Status: Accepted (Special Act)

This was a very confusing file to go through.  At first it looked like there were two Margaret Fletchers: a nurse from Illinois and a widow from California.  Fortunately for my sanity and the people at the Archives there is only one Margaret J. Fletcher, and she is both a nurse and a widow.
Fletcher, an Irish immigrant, married her husband William a few years before the outbreak of the war.  William enlisted in the 80th Illinois as a cook and, for whatever, reason, Margaret went with him as a regimental nurse.  Eventually they ended up at Hospital No. 3 in Lebanon, Kentucky, and then Hospital No. 20 in Louisville as permanent staff members.  Somewhere in there Margaret made her way to the aftermath of the Battle of Perryville.  There were no bandages, so, in traditional heroic fashion, Fletcher tore up her undergarments to supply the needed dressings.
Margaret escaped the war no worse for wear, but old age and rheumatism caught up with her, and Fletcher found herself unable to perform the odd nursing jobs she'd picked up after the war.  So, Fletcher applied for a special act, backed by the president of her local Woman's Relief Corps, Rhodes A. Durham. The bill was introduced on December 18, 1889, and passed April 21, 1890.
Now here comes the strange and confusing bit.  In 1906, someone, probably the postmaster who looked after pensions in Harrisburg, IL, reported Fletcher dead.  Apparently, though, she'd moved to Oakland, California.  She put in two requests for an increase in pension, which leads me to suspect her husband had passed, and joined the local WRC Post.  Then she went and disappeared--again--around 1916.  After three years her post president, Mrs. Brinkerhoff, wrote the Bureau asking for her address, but all they could tell her was that she was still alive and listed Coulterville, Illinois as her post office.
Fletcher got her increase in 1920 from a general act (Congress finally realized that $12 a month was not going to cut it for these women, what with these little things like inflation and old age), and started receiving $30 a month.  Unfortunately, she didn't get to enjoy it for very long.  Margaret Fletcher passed away on Christmas Eve, 1923, still living in Coulterville, with her brother and his family beside her.

Maria M.C. Richards

Pension File: 990033, 547263
P.O.: Unionville, Connecticut
Service: volunteer nurse as several hospitals (see below)
Applied: 1890
Status: Accepted (special act)

Midterms are done (finally) so now I can get back to my thesis.  Richards was one of the nurses I had a pension file for, but, as you can see, her pension came from a special act, so...need a legislative file.  Half the time the legislative files aren't there--I have a suspicion as to where they are, but I'll save that for December--but Richards' file was there. Success!
Richards wrote to Representative Byron Cutchon, a Republican from Michigan and a former Union soldier whom she'd met in the service, asking for his help in securing a pension.  She had three children to educate, she wrote, and her health was deteriorating.  The "nervous strain of sympathy with the suffering, and the unaccustomed privations in mode of living," along with several months of fever after the end of her service in 1865 had permanently damaged her health.  Cutchon wrote back, agreeing to help, but the bill had to come from her district representative, so off to another congressman she went, this time Mr. W.E. Simonds.  Between the two of them, Cutchon and Simonds got the bill in front of Congress and it passed in February, 1891.  Richards didn't get the $25 she wanted, but she drew $12 a month until her death in 1912.
There's a detailed description of Richards' service in her affidavit--this woman was all over the place.  She took two Connecticut soldiers into her home even before the First Bull Run, then, since she lived in D.C. at the time (she was unmarried and living with her parents), worked at the Patent Office Hospital from its opening in August, 1861, until it temporarily closed in June, 1862, at which point she attached herself to the Army of the Potomac, working at Fortress Monroe, on hospital transports (apparently the boat was actually fired on once!) and field hospitals during the Peninsula Campaign and Antietam.  After Antietam she remained at Smoketown Hospital until May, 1863, when she transferred to Annapolis and remained there for the remainder of the war.  With that kind of service, I was really hoping to find some primary sources on her, so I went to check google books.  And guess what I found? A list of army nurses created by the Woman's Relief Corps in 1888 Convention Report that I didn't know about...I am miffed.  More information on Richards is going to have to wait until I go through the Convention Report, but there were some interesting things in Richards' file that will make their way into my rough draft, her description of her physical condition for one, and her brief mention of payment for another (she only received pay for two months, and that was because a "tyrannical" surgeon threatened to remove her if she did not sign the pay rolls).  Her acquaintance with a member of the House of Representatives is also interesting.  And then, of course, there's her connection to the WRC...
As a member of the WRC, Richards probably knew that the Army Nurses Pension Act was supposed to go before Congress some time in 1892.  Even if she didn't, Cutchon mentioned the Act in his reply to her first letter.  So why did she go ahead with it?  Was it because she wanted the $25 instead of $12?  Did she know something about the progress of the bill that I don't?  Always there are more questions...

Schlesinger Library

Today I took the T into Cambridge and visited Schlesinger Library.  Schlesinger is part of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and specializes in Women's History, so I was hoping it would have some relevant files.  Schlesinger did not disappoint.  I pulled one file each on Clara Barton, Harriet Patience Dame (president of the Army Nurses Association), and Sallie Joy White (a female journalist who had a letter from Mary A. Livermore).  They also had a box of WRC material which I also pulled.
The Barton folder would be interesting to a Barton scholar, but didn't have anything pertaining to my nurses or the Act.  Same for Ms. White.  Dame's folder was one letter, written to a Mr. Austin and thanking him for making her an honorary member of the Trinity Historical Society.  There's nothing substantial in it, but Dame does refer briefly to her work assisting soldiers and nurses as one of the reasons for her late reply.
The gem of the trip was definitely the WRC material.  In the file were two rosters, one from 1890 and one from 1895 (so now I can beef up my list of WRC members).  There was also an order book from November, 1887 to August, 1892.  The orders are from both the national and the state level, mostly  announcing newly elected officials, updates on the upcoming yearly convention, or, around Memorial Day, giving patriotic speeches written by the National President.  There are, however, snippets.  For instance, this bit from General Orders No. 9, dated August 20, 1892:

"X.X.  The Army Nurse Pension Bill, so long pending, passed the House June 28; the Senate, July 26; was signed by President Harrison August 5, 1892, and is now a law.  Let us rejoice together that these women have at least received National recognition for their self-sacrificing services during the late war.  Though small, $12 per month will add much comfort to their declining years."

There is also mention of Certificates of Service issued to army nurses by the WRC--certificates which, if I'm right, turned up in my pension files--and the enormous petition from the Archives, which gives me some context for these pieces.  Because the orders list newly elected officers, I also have a list of women who served on the National Pension Committee, when they took office, and when they resigned or left office.  Now, if they mention the pensions the WRC awarded, or talk about how the WRC came to support the pension bill, life will be very good.  Oh, and did I mention the collection was purcahsed from the Waltham Historical Society back in the 1970s and it looks like there's still some papers there--specifically letters?  Time for a field trip.

Clara B. Hoyt

Pension File: 1133681
P.O.: Rush Center, Kansas
Service: Nurse at Columbian College Hospital and Point of Rocks Hospital
Applied: 1891
Status: Rejected

This is one the annoying files where you know there's more somewhere, but for whatever reason it's impossible to find.  Hoyt has a legislative file--and an interesting one at that--but her pension file is MIA.  I've requested it twice, and each time I've gotten a rejection slip.  I am not happy.
A brief of sketch of Hoyt based on what her legislative file contains: Hoyt served as a nurse under the direction of Dorothea Dix under her maiden name, Clara B. Clark, from the fall of 1864 to around the 20th of May, 1865.  After the war, Clara married and moved from her home in New York to Kansas.  In 1889 she contacted Congressman Ingalls about obtaining a pension through a Special Act.  Ingalls did what he could, and the bill was brought before the Senate twice, one in May, 1890, and again in December, 1891, but each time it was referred back to Committee.  Search me as to why.  Once the 1892 Act passed, Hoyt applied for a pension through the Bureau rather than a Special Act--and as a result, the file ends, which is why I'd so like to get my hands on that file!  I know her claim was rejected, since her pension file number doesn't have a certificate number (the first number, and generally the only one, is the application number, and the second is the certificate number, only given when a person is granted a pension).
Here come the surprises:
First, another reason why I'd love to get that pension file: Hoyt's attorney was named Ellen S. Tolman of Lawrence, Massachusetts  Unless I'm reading that name incorrectly, or Ellen was originally a guy's name ("Oh, Ashley, Ashley!!"), we have a female lawyer on our hands!  There's also the question of why Hoyt hired an attorney living in Massachusetts when she herself lived in Kansas.
Second, the WRC made a guest appearance in the file.  This time it wasn't Annie Wittenmyer, it was Sarah E. Fuller, a former president and Secretary of the National Pension Committee.  In 1890, Fuller wrote Ingalls a letter in support of Hoyt's claim, and attached an "Army Nurses Blank" provided by the WRC.  My guess is that the WRC used these forms in their own pension process--the WRC provided pensions to its members, but emphasized these were supposed to be temporary relief.  The blank asks who commissioned the nurse, dates of enrollment and discharge, age at enrollment, if the applicant has any papers to back her claim, her pecuniary circumstances, marital status, state of health, and how employed.  That's how I know that Hoyt suffered from rheumatism and catarrh, and her pecuniary circumstances were "at present not flattering."  It also presents another research possibility--where are the WRC-issued pensions, and can I use the information in those files to supplement what I've gathered from the Archives?  Another rabbit hole! Madness!

One Week Left!

One Week Left!

When I started this project, my first goal was to put together a list of women who applied for pensions between 1866 and 1892.  My total is somewhere around 625—and if fold3 would update its database every once in a while, and Ancestry let me limit pensions by year, it’d be much bigger.  Anyway, since the Archives only allow a certain number of pulls a day, and I’m only here for five weeks, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pull all 650, so I printed out a list, highlighted every other name, and hoped that this would be a good random sampling.  And if it wasn’t, well, in five weeks I can pull a maximum of 400 pensions, and since 625 divided by 2 is 312.5, I have some wiggle room.  One week, to be precise.  Next week.

Which is why yesterday there was no post.  I know I can always come back to D.C. this summer, or come up in the fall, but I want to get as much done now as possible.  So yesterday was planning.  And here is the to-do list:

I have time for 72 more pension pulls.  Go back through the rejection slips (you know, I got 9 yesterday. 9!!  And Harriet Stinson Pond is not an officer from a Kentucky regiment! Geez…), and decide which ones I want to/can request again.  Then, go through the master list and see if I missed anyone I particularly wanted to pull—blacks, nuns, women who are particularly well-documented.  Random sampling for the rest of the list.  DONE

Legislation has the list of Special Acts I want to see.  Pull those, go through.  Make sure to check for women not on the list.  Also go through the other file related to the 1892 Act.

Put together a list of the Congressmen on the Committee on Invalid Pensions and see if they have papers here or at the LoC.  I have a few letters between the WRC and various Congressmen, so I know the correspondence is there, it’s just a matter of finding it.

Check to see if the LoC of the Archives have anything on the WRC women on the National Pension Committee: E. Florence Barker, Kate B. Sherwood, Lydia A. Scott, Mary A. Logan, Sarah E. Fuller, Clara Barton and Annie Wittenmyer (technically she’s not on the Committee, she’s the WRC president, but she’s endorsing so many applications she might as well be on the committee).  Also, see if there’s anything on James Tanner—Tanner was Commissioner of Pensions in 1889 and had very liberal policies about who he gave pensions too.  After he exceeded the Bureau's budget and had to resign, he set up a private law firm, specializing in pensions.  In 1892, he offered to help nurses obtain pensions.  Legally, he couldn’t ask for a fee for his work; it all had to be pro bono.  But, he still offered, and a significant number of the nurses on my list have power of attorney papers giving him the ability to prosecute their case, or affidavits and forms with his firm’s stamp on it.  If he has papers, they could shed some light on how these women found out about the pensions, the process of applying, and why so many women chose him to act for them.

If there’s time, go through the microfilm of letters to/from the Pension Office from 1860s to 1890 and see if there are letters relating to the project (they have the letters from 1890 onward nicely indexed by subject and sender, but not these—why?!).

A number of my nurses lived here in D.C. for a time, like Susan Edson and Caroline Burghardt (I actually live a block and a smidge from one of them—her home is now a Bertucci’s…).  Check the D.C. historical society and see if they have files on these women.  Chances are slim, since the last time I checked they were looking for a new head librarian, and have been closed for nearly a year, but you never know.

Finally: if the weather ever cools down enough to leave air-conditioned comfort and permit long walks, I want to go to Arlington.  A few of my nurses are buried there, and I’d like to see them and get pictures for their files.

So, no problem, right?  Right.

One more week, guys! Keep your fingers crossed it’s a good one!

51A-H10.1

Today promised to be a big day.  Wednesday is the first day of the week I can put in twenty pull requests instead of sixteen.  And this Wednesday I was going to finish Mary E. Walker's microfilm, and look at the rest of the 51st Congress Senate Private Acts and move on to the 52nd.  The cherry: legislation pulled 51A-H10.1, the Committee on Invalid Pension's file on the Army Nurses Pension Act.  All kinds of good things lined up.
And it didn't disappoint.  Walker is finished and I'm in the midst of transcribing the documents; the 51st and 52nd Congress Private Acts are done, and I have a couple extra nurses who weren't on my list. And 51A-H10.1 is photographed.  I feel virtuous.
51A wasn't what I expected though.  I was hoping for correspondance between committee members and members of the WRC arguing for support, letters between committee members debating the merits of the bill, or discussing who they needed to persuade and how to go about it.  I didn't get much of that, though.  There were two identical letters, sent to George Seney and D.B. Henderson by Kate B. Sherwood, the Chairman of the National Pension and Relief Committee for the WRC, presenting the Army Nurses Bill and asking for support.  There's no indication of whether or not either Congressman gave the bill their support.
There were also more of the petitions I'd found earlier--apparently Indiana sent theirs in late.  Their late arrival necessitated a letter from Armilla Cheney, the WRC treasurer explaining the situation, and a letter from Clara Barton to Mr. Cogswell forwarding them on to him.
I don't remember if I mentioned this in previous posts, but Barton was an active member of the WRC.  She served on the WRC Pension Committee until the bill finally passed, and also served as National Chaplain for a number of years.  She was so often in D.C. that the Pension Committee effectively made her their agent in the capitol.  What exactly being that agent entaled I didn't know until I read this letter, which reveals a little of what Barton was up to.  Apparently, the petitions I looked at earlier were sent to Barton, and she in turn sent them to Senator Blaire, the head of the Committee on Invalid Pensions and a strong advocate for the Nurses Pension Act.  When these stragglers arrived, Barton sent them on to Mr. Cogswell to add to the petition; as Barton put it, "from the size of that 'cart wheel' roll one would judge that it needed no further accessories--but vast as the sea is, the drops still fall in it and the little brooks flow to it, so I suppose it's all right."
I also found an intriguing little pamphlet tucked in the folder: Joint Resolution No. 3. from the General Assembly and Governor of Iowa, "asking Congress to enact a law providing for pensioning certain women enrolled as Army Nurses."
Any ideas why Iowa of all states is endorsing the Nurses Pension Act?

Adelia Ferris

Pension File:  1138500, 858128 (Special Act)
P.O.: Jackson, Michigan
Service: Nurse at Columbian and Mt. Pleasant Hospitals
Applied: 1891
Final Status: Accepted

There's nothing remarkable about Adelia Ferris' file.  Ferris, nee Billings, was widowed in 1858.  When war broke out, she volunteered for service as a nurse and was accepted by Dorothea Dix.  Ferris served for three years until she was discharged in the fall of 1864.  Apparently things did not go well after that.  The Special Act report states that several decades after the war, what little property she had went up in smoke in the Great Chicago Fire--including her commission from Dix and whatever other papers she may have had to back her claim that she had, in fact, served as a nurse.  Luckily for Ferris, the War Department records (for once) showed that she had been commissioned, and that she had been paid $12 a month.  Ferris managed to get a Special Act granting her a $12 pension passed in July, 1892--just before the Army Nurses Pension Act was passed.
So, standard stuff so far, right?
Well, here's the thing I hadn't seen before: a very large certificate from the W.R.C. certifying that Ferris was enrolled as an Army Nurse from November 26, 1862, was commissioned by Dorothea Dix, and served for ten months until honorably discharged September, 1863.
The information on the certificate isn't new.  It's the mere fact that the certificate itself exists, and that Ferris included this in her application that intrigues me.  Not only is the WRC singlehandedly muscling the Army Nurses Pension Act through Congress, and supporting numerous pension claims, they're investigating these women themselves.  This isn't Annie Wittenmyer anymore acting as attorney for the claimant, filing affidavits or what have you.  And this isn't a nurse using the WRC to network and find other nurses she served with who can help her.  This is full on institutional endorsement, with an investigation behind it.
To my wonderful, faithful readers: do any of you know where I can find documents relating to pensions issued by the WRC to its members, the investigations it launched into nurses' service (like Ferris), and/or its National Pension Committee?  Bits and pieces are good for keeping a girl excited and motivated, but I'm going to need a broader picture if I want to do this properly.  Let me know if you think of anything!

A Very Large Petition

Today was one of those days where almost everything seemed to go right.
Negatives: it rained, and they pulled two soldiers instead of my nurses--apparently they had the same file numbers...
Positives: My people in legislation came through for me again.  Apparently, while pulling my nurses' files, he found two boxes on the Army Nurses Pension Act.  What was in them, you ask?
Something that made me grin like a maniac when I opened up the folder.
Petitions.  Hundreds of individual petitions sent out by the WRC to all its Corps to be signed, returned, and sent to Congress to demonstrate just how many people supported the Army Nurses Pension Act.  The names are those of WRC members, GAR members, and "friends of the soldiers."  So far, the vast majority of petitions are from Massachusetts, which, as a native, makes me extremely happy.  There was even one from the West Acton WRC Corps--West Acton is essentially Boxborough, my hometown.  There are also petitions from New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Kansas-there's a second box I haven't even touched so the list will grow.  I found a reference to the petition in a letter written by a WRC officer: there are over 160,000 signatures on the petition. 160,000!  Put this together with the 100,000 members of the WRC...I'm just going to let Sarah Fuller tell you.  She's the genius that put all this together, anyway.

"Our petition, 31,000 feet long, had the bonna fide signatures of 160,000 men and women of the different States, and the W.R.C. now numbers about 100,000 members, this with the endorsement of the National Pension Committee of the G.A.R. authorizing us to speak for the 500,000 comrades, gave us a backing of nearly 800,000 people.  Will our legislators disregard that force?"

Now, here's the thing.  Several other letters I've found suggest that the G.A.R. withdrew its support at one point because the WRC was asking for $25 pensions, and the G.A.R. supported $12 pensions.  The G.A.R was also rather hesitant to push for a pension for Mary Bickerdyke several years earier.  So, what exactly is the role of the G.A.R in getting this act passed, and why do they seem so hesitant at times to give it their support?

Mary Ann Bickerdyke

Pension File: 574178 (Special Act)
PO: San Francisco
Service: Nurse, Med. Dept, US. Vols.
Applied: 1886
Final Status: Accepted
This was a file I really wanted to get my hands on.  Bickerdyke was a force to be reckoned with during the war: she worked alongside the Sanitary Commission to supply men on the front lines, helped establish hospitals on and off the front lines, and kept them running, well-staffed, and well-supplied.  If you got in her way, or displeased her, you were out.  A popular Bickerdyke story goes that she found out an assisstant surgeon at one of her wards had gotten drunk one night and, in sleeping off the hangover the next morning, neglected the men in his ward.  Furious, she pulled enough strings to get him discharged from the army.  When the surgeon complained to Sherman, who was in command at the time, the general asked who had procured his discharge.  "I was discharged in consequence of misrepresentation," the surgeon insisted.  "But who caused your discharge?"  "Why...I suppose it was that woman, Mrs. Bickerdyke."  And at this, Sherman replied, "Oh, well, if it was her, I can do nothing for you.  She ranks me."  She was universally loved and admired.  The soldiers adored her.  They called her "Mother Bickerdyke."  After the war, Bickerdyke continued to support her boys by helping many to secure pensions.
As far as I can tell, however, Bickerdyke never applied for a pension herself.  That was done by the Woman's Relief Corps--the female auxilary to the G.A.R. which was instrumental in getting the '92 Pension Act passed.  A Special Act was passed in 1886 granted Bickerdyke a $25 pension (higher than the $16 suggested by the WRC, but lower than the $50 in the original petition).
So, we have a powerful, influential woman receiving a pension she probably never applied for in the first place...this has to be a major file, right?
There were seven papers in that file.  Seven.
All the Special Act pensions I've pulled thus far are like this: depressingly thin.  There has to be another file out there, one for Special Acts, that has more documents.  Tomorrow morning, I'm going to the Resource Room to find them.
One interesting thing I did find: one of the documents in the file contained a note by the Department of State which said,
"The foregoing act having been presented to the President of the United States for his approval, and not having been returned by him to the house of Congress in which it originated within the time prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, has become a law without his approval."
Why would Cleveland do this?  I somehow doubt it's just because he never got around to looking at the bill.  Hopefully the missing files will shed some additional light. Fingers crossed.