The Database is Finished!

It took me two months, but the database is finally finished!  Woot!!
One of the things I was very interested in seeing was just who these women worked for.  Dix only recruited so many women--so where did the rest of the women fit in?  Here's the breakdown:

• 21% were contract nurses: women who enlisted or made contracts with individual doctors or surgeons rather than going through Dix, the USSC, or the USCC.  These women were paid 40 cents a day.
• 18% enlisted under Dix and were a part of her nursing corps.  They also received 40 cents a day.
• 11% were regimental nurses, who traveled with the regiment to the front lines.
• 11% served with the Sanitary Commission
• 3% served with the Christian Commission
• 12% volunteered their services and were never paid, per their own request.  They didn't work for any larger organization.
• 2% worked directly for the army in some capacity--these are my "outliers," women like Kady Brownell, Mary E. Walker, and Mary Hooker, who served as soldiers, spies, or surgeons.
• .1% were arsenal workers--poor Mary Dougherty was the only one I found.
• 22% I couldn't identify.  Sometimes it was because there was nothing in the file.  More often, however, it was because these women called themselves "volunteer nurses" which could mean anything under the sun.

I'm a little surprised at the numbers, honestly.  For one, I thought the USCC numbers would be higher, since Wittenmyer (a USCC agent) was operating the hospital diet kitchens, but most of the women who worked in the diet kitchens didn't identify themselves as Christian Commission workers--in fact, the Christian Commission is barely mentioned.  Instead, diet kitchen workers received their pay from the federal government, which effectively makes them contract nurses.
The number of regimental nurses also surprised me.  In early June, 1861, Simon Cameron (Lincoln's first Sec. of War) issued an order that "women nurses will not reside in the camps, nor accompany regiments on a march," and there were several general orders issued throughout the war that removed women from the front lines.  Though, there's not much point in ordering the women away if they aren't already there to be ordered away...so apparently, despite all efforts to the contrary, women did attach themselves to regiments and follow them to the front lines.  At least half of my regimental workers also had a husband or sons in the regiment they were attached to--which gives them a strong reason for staying.
Another aspect I wanted to look at was color.  I managed to positively identify 6 women as black, usually through sheer dumb luck.  I think I mentioned this in a previous post, but color was not something the Pension Bureau asked about.  The only way for them to tell was for the records to say "colored contract nurse" or "contraband" or someone to mention something in correspondence.  Otherwise, short of hitting the census records, there's no way to tell.
4 of my black nurses were contract nurses--meaning they made arrangements with individual doctors or hospitals to work in return for pay.  That I expected.  I also found one women who was part of Dix's nursing corps: Jane Howard; and one woman who worked as a regimental nurse: Patsey Green.  That I did not expect.  I also did not expect Jane Howard's application to have the signatures of Ellen Tolman and Caroline Burghardt.  Then, I started looking at the success rates.  Only two of these women managed to secure pensions.  However, of the four that didn't, only two applied after the ANPA.  The other two were rejected on the grounds that there simply was no legislation that allowed the government to pension women.  Keeping in mind that 6 women does not a full story make, a 50% success rate post-1892 is pretty dang good.
A couple more interesting numbers: the vast majority of women (over 200) had no attorney when they applied for their pension.  Since the ANPA stated that any legal help in prosecuting these pensions had to be gratuitous, I'm not surprised.  James Tanner (the former Commissioner of Pensions who offered to help the WRC nurses) is listed as attorney for at least 20 women, Ellen Tolman is listed in 5 (and acts as witness in several others), and Wittenmyer is attorney in 11 (but is, again, used as a reference in at least a dozen more).  No one else comes close to managing the number of claims they do.
The final stat: success rates.

• 10% were abandoned
• 10% were rejected outright
• 7% didn't state if the claim was successful or not
• 73% were accepted

 Of the 73% that were accepted:

• 60% went through the Special Act process (meaning they could have been passed before the ANPA, or that they fulfilled the spirit if not the letter of the ANPA and got their pension via Special Act post-1892)
• 40% did not

Also, out of that 73%:

• 88% were accepted right off the bat
• 9% were originally rejected and the claimants either filed again or managed to get a Special Act
• 2% were rejected twice, and had to apply a third time
• 1% were rejected three times, and had to apply a fourth time

I know the Special Acts passed pre-1892 are skewing the success rate stats, and I will be going through at some point and getting better numbers on those so I can get a better sense of the ANPA success rate.  But if you halve the number of accepted pensions to account for the majority of the Special Acts (and I know, somewhere out there, a stats person is crying), the success rate suddenly becomes almost 1 in 2, where before it was 3 in 4.  Wonder what the rate was for soldiers...
Okay, no more numbers, I promise!  This week is dedicated to writing the rough draft to my intro, and I promise I'll be posting so you can see what I'm up to.  There's a lot of stuff I haven't touched on yet, and I really want to talk about Jane Howard's file.  So much to do!!

The Database

I won't be posting a biography tonight--my pictures are all on the desktop which is currently sitting downstairs in the front room waiting for me to clear enough space on my desk to house it...since my desk is covered in books, that could take a while.  Instead, I'm going to briefly explain part of what I'll be doing once the computer is hooked up.
'The Database' is an Excel file where I plug in certain information gleaned from the pension records.  There are two reasons to have this file.  One is so I can quickly find the file I'm looking for--I know I'm not going to keep all 350 women straight.  If I remember if she was a Special Act or not, where she served, or other details, I can narrow down the possibilities and pull the relevant files.  The other reasons is to look for patterns.  It'll be easier to explain what kinds of patterns if I list off the things I'm pulling:

1. Name
2. Year Applied
3. Status (Accepted, Rejected, Abandoned)
4. Year Dropped (if accepted)
5. Residence
6. Branch (was she in the USSC, the USCC, a contract nurse, a Sister of Charity, a regimental nurse, one of Dix's nursing corps, or was she an independent operator?)
7. Color (white or black)
8. Marital status at enlistment
9. Children at enlistment
10. Occupation at enlistment
11. Family in the army
12. Hospitals served
13. Marital status and occupation at application
14. If she has an occupation, is it a government job?
15. Nature of disability sustained (was it in service, or is it general disability/old age?)
16. Member of the Woman's Relief Corps
17. Member of the American Nurses Assocation
18. Attorney
19. Special Act or 1892 Act application
20. If a Special Act, who introduced the bill to Congress
21. If an 1892 Act app., did they satisfy the 6 months service requirement? The competant authority requirement?  Was it accepted?
22. Subsequent action (any special investigations, increases, or if she was rejected the first time around, did she try again?)
23. Evidence of networking with fellow nurses (did she have other nurses write affidavits, did the WRC or ANA support it?)

You can ask or answer all kinds of questions with the information from this database.  I'm a little nervous about drawing sweeping conclusions from it since it is only 350 women, compared to the 2000 plus who applied for pensions, and the thousands more who served and never applied.  But this will give me strong indicators of patterns, things I need to look into, other questions I need to ask.  For instance, if the WRC and the ANA were pushing so hard for the 1892 Act, it should follow that many of the early applicants were members.  Is that true?  How much did these groups help women apply?  Were there any attorneys whose names keep popping up, like James Tanner and Annie Wittenmyer who I can look into?  What were the problems applicants faced trying to prove their service?  Were there particular branches that had trouble establishing service or competant authority?  What kind of women served?  What kind of women applied?  Essentially, the questions I started out to answer.
This bit goes out to the peanut gallery I know is out there: can you think of any other information I can plug into the database?  Any questions I can ask?  As I was reminded several times in D.C., multiple heads are better than one.  Especially when one is pretty close to not seeing the forest for the trees.  Sing out if you think of anything!

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!

Ten Down, A Couple Hundred To Go

Today was my experimental day, trying to get a rhythm for how to approach my research.  Here is what I've learned:

• It is possible to put in all my pension requests for the day first thing in the morning, so I don't have to drop everything and run down twenty minutes before a pull time to frantically fill out forms.  In fact, I can drop them off the night before and they'll put the slips in the next morning.  This is a very good thing.
• Originally, I planned to photocopy some of the longer, hand-written pieces in the files, and photograph everything else.  That is, until I discovered the Archives let you scan everything to a USB drive...for a price.  I experimented with all three, and found I like having photographs of everything (all to be transcribed later in the day), and then scanning the longer pieces.
• Because these are government papers, there are dozens of forms.  Forms are my friends.  Type up a rough copy of the form, print out multiple copies, and fill out as needed for each pensioner.  Lets me spend more time actually soaking in the information instead of going immediately on to the next document as well as saving me a little extra money on copying.

I put in pull requests for 16 nurses today, and got 13 back.  One pension is still housed with Veteran Affairs, one they were unable to locate, and the third belongs to someone completely different.  Still, 13 was more than enough.  I'll be playing catch-up tomorrow morning once I fill out my pull forms.  Tomorrow I'll have a more detailed profile on one of the nurses to put up, but for now I'll give you a sampling of the women I found: an escaped slave turned laundress, the wife of an army chaplain, a "Mother", and a Sanitary Commission worker.  Now guess: who received a pension, and who was denied?