Happy 4th, Everyone!

Carver Hospital, all decked out

Diary of Amanda Aiken, July 4, 1864.
     "A beautiful day, with a pleasant breeze.  Gave each of my attendants a dollar for a holiday treat, which seemed to afford them much pleasure.  Wrote out my list of patients since the last engagements.  I remained in the ward to let No. 6, my orderly, and as many of the attendants as possible go out.  The hospital have them an extra dinner, and I made chocolate and treated them in the afternoon, and stewed my last jar of dried cherries for their tea.  Didn't go to the house until five o'clock.  After tea accompanied Miss McClellan home, where we had ice cream.  Misses Merrill and Griggs, with Drs. Bobbin and Eitchings, soon followed us.  It was a pleasant evening."

Return of the Wayward Blogger

Man, it is good to be back!
It's hard to believe it's been over two years since I last posted on 'For A Woman.'  But after two years of slogging through graduate school I finally have the time to go back to my own research and give these women the time they deserve.
My hope is to ultimately turn this blog into a database, a repository of information on Civil War nurses.  The pensions I pulled will serve as the core research material, but I also want to see what I can get my hands on using online resources and local historical societies.  That may mean some significant revisions of some of the pages, or even creating a new site, I'm not sure.  I know it means revisiting some older posts--I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two since undergrad, and I've turned up a few new things about some of these women in the past two years.
And just like 'For a Woman' helped with my undergrad thesis, hopefully this blog will be a jumping-off point for my dissertation (yikes!), focusing on the postwar lives of Civil War nurses: what happened to them? Where did they go? How did they make the transition back to 'normal' life? How did their service change them? How were they remembered?  How did they remember themselves?  We know so much about the postwar lives of male veterans, but so very little about the women.  I plan on changing that.
For now, though, I'm happy just going back through the files and posting profiles.  There are at least 20,000 women listed on government muster sheets and payrolls from the Civil War, and I've posted on a measly 40-odd women!  I've got my work cut out for me.
As always, if you guys see anything in your travels about these women, please let me know!  There is so little on them, and most of it tucked away in forgotten corners, so every little bit helps.

My Thesis Is Done!

So, clearly the one-week hiatus turned into a much longer one, and I'm very sorry I left everyone in the dark.  I was working overtime on the thesis and juggling my other schoolwork.  But, I would like to announce that my thesis is finally DONE!!!  It is nearly 80 pages long (86 when I put in the 1.5" margin that W&M asks for), and I still wish I could cover more information, but I have to save something for future papers, right?  I just hope it does justice to these women.  If anyone is interested in reading it, Swem Library requires all honors thesis students to submit an electronic copy of their thesis to the Swem Digital Archive before the end of the exam period.  I have not submitted mine yet, and won't until my defense is over and I've made a few corrections, but the final product should be posted there by the end of May.  The link is: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/15.  You can also just search for Swem Digital Archives and plug the thesis title into the search box.
This does not mean that the blog is over for good.  I have every intention of starting the blog back up once exams are over.  I think though I'll only update once or twice a week rather than every weekday.  Also, I know I asked this before, but if anyone has a particular nurse they are interested in, and think I may have her pension file, please let me know!
As always, thanks to everyone for reading this blog!  It really does mean a lot to me.  I'll be back after exams!

1000 Views and a Hiatus

"For A Woman" hit over 1000 views over the weekend!  Small peanuts, I know, but I still think it's amazing.  Keep it up, guys!  It's those views that keep me posting.
In other news, I am taking a one week break to focus on my thesis.  I am nearly done with Chapter 3--which, after I break out the red pen, will become Chapter 2--and, since I still haven't covered everything I want to cover, there needs to be a Chapter 4.  However, this means that I can rebuild my buffer, so when updates start back up next Monday we should be good for another couple of weeks, at least until early April.  And, if all goes to plan, Monday will also feature a rundown of some of the exciting things I've been finding recently, putting together all these pensions I've been posting here and drawing some larger conclusions from them.  See you then!

Of Graduate Schools, Re-enactments, and Senior Workload

The title says it all, really.  I'm sorry for not updating for over a week--I'm in the midst of applying to grad schools, and I had a re-enactment in upstate New York I was prepping for (and let's not forget the nine hour drive one-way).  I'm also probably coming down with a cold, so I may not be updating for the next few days.  I think I'll write up a couple summaries next time and save them for when I'm swamped.
In other news, the rough draft for chapter 1 is done, and we are on to chapter 2.  Also, I'll probably be revising my intro sooner than I expected so I can send it in to grad schools as my writing sample, so watch that page count climb!

The Results of Break

Finally back from break!  Well, I don't know if you could really call it a break.  I spent two days in D.C. back at my favorite place in the world, the National Archives, and pulled 25 new pension files and 25 legislative files.  Most of the legislative files were for nurses I already had pension files for, and a few were vice versa, which is why the new grand total is 378 rather than 400.  I'd still say that's pretty good for two days work though.I also realized something I'd missed before.  One of the forms in practically every claim filed after the Army Nurses Pension Act announces the final decision of the Bureau; it list the claimant's name, address, attorney, and whether or not the claim was submitted for rejection or approval--and if rejected, it outlines why.  At the very end of the form is a section called "Service Shown By Record."  Normally the first line is what the claimant states her service was, and the second line is what the official records reveals.  Just above or below that is the vague little phrase, "claimant writes," or, sometimes more clearly, "claimant signs by mark."  Originally, I thought all it meant was that this was what the claimant said as opposed to the official records.  When I opened my first file over break, however, a bigger meaning dawned on me (and then proceeded to scold me for being so slow).  Bureau officials were taking note of whether or not a claimant was literate or not.  Many of the studies I've read about pensions for widows and blacks note that success was tied to literacy.  From the numbers I've pulled from my database it doesn't appear that literacy was a deciding factor in nurses' applications, but I plan on going back through the files and doing a more thorough analysis.  When I have, I'll post some hard numbers.  Right now, however, my priority is the rough draft of my first draft and surviving midterms.  I'll post a file for one of the nurses I pulled over break tomorrow, I promise!

Act 2

I realized today that I haven't explained the new 'countdown' under the Final Tally, or said anything about what I'm doing now that I've finished the database.  Way back in June when I started this blog I said that this is for my senior Honors thesis.  Now that I'm back at school, the next step is to start writing.  I sat down with my adviser a few weeks ago and came up with a schedule--one chapter (in rough draft form) every three weeks.  With any lucky, I'll be done with the entire rough draft just before Christmas.  After that, we'll go over it, refine it, figure out if I need to do more research in certain areas, etc.  The 'Days Till Final Submission' countdown is the number of days until I have to submit my final draft: April 14.  Once that's in, it'll go to my examining committee, who will read it and decide whether or not it's acceptable.  If it is, I'll go through an oral examination, and they'll decide whether to award me Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors.
But, like I said, that's in April.  There's plenty of time between now and then to work on this project (I keep telling myself this...self has yet to believe me).  The rough draft for my intro is due next week, so I'll be spending the weekend in the library pounding that out.  Trying to drag myself out of the details and look at the big picture again so I can write this introduction is probably the hardest thing I've had to do so far with this project.  If you couldn't tell, I love my rabbit holes.  I want to find out as much about each woman as possible, both for the thrill of the hunt, but also because I want to do these women justice, and the best way to do that is to have as much information as possible.  But since this is not a dissertation (as I am constantly reminded), I have to focus.  And, as a historian, looking at the big picture, and answering the bigger, over-arching questions is my job.  So, it's not going to be easy, but that is why this is a rough draft: so I can check myself when I start to slip.
I should probably go invest in some red pens...lots of 'em...
Wish me luck!

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!!

A.F.K.

I've been kidnapped by three insane women and taken to Pittsburgh, so apparently I'm unavailable to blog...hey, take it up with them, not me.  Shall be back online as soon as I escape their dastardly clutches.

P.S. These girls are evil.  Approach with caution.

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.

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!

End Act 1

Today was my last day at the Archives.  Which meant nose to the grind stone, trying not to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head screaming, "You've forgotten something!"  I can't say I completely succeeded in ignoring it, but I didn't run around like a madwoman.  Always a good thing.
It's honestly a little surreal.  My mind keeps going, Wait, there's no work?  You mean I  can sleep in every morning?  What about my walk in the morning?  I don't get to say hi to Barack and Booth? What am I supposed to do with myself? 
The short term answer is come up with a final tally.

Pension files pulled: 322
Legislative pension files pulled: 103

Some of the legislative files and pension files deal with the same person, so the total isn't the combination of the two.  Once you account for those, here's the grand total:

354 pensions

Now we add the goodies.  I pulled Mary Ann Bickerdyke's and Clara Barton's papers from the Library of Congress.  Bickerdyke was involved in securing pensions for a number of nurses, and Barton was a member of the WRC Pension Committee, so both women had something to add to the bigger picture.  We also have the huge petition the WRC circulated, a few tidbits from the 1892 Act file, and the 1888 Act file I pulled today.  I have transcripts for the debate surrounding both bills and the names of several Congressmen involved in the bill (both for and against) who I can look into.  I have the names of over a dozen women involved in the WRC National Pension Committee and the Army Nurses Association.  And let's not forget the names of 354 women I can plug into search engines or send to historical societies to try and find personal letters.
I don't have a battleplan for Act 2 yet.  I know it will consist of going through every single pension file, plugging the information into some sort of spreadsheet to look for patterns, and following up on all the leads I've been finding.  And, of course, keeping up the blog.  But for now, I'm heading home and putting my feet up for a few days.  Sleep...

Happy 4th of July Everyone!

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?

Getting Underway

I hate introductions.  You feel like you have to say something witty or profound.  Lucky for you, dear reader, you get neither.  Just a simply hello and a brief introduction to what this blog is all about.
I created this blog to talk about my research for my senior Honors thesis, to help me organize my thoughts, make sense of things, and hopefully elicit some feedback.  My research focuses on Civil War army nurses--specifically, those who applied for pensions in the years after the war.  Only a year into the war, the Federal government realized that it needed to provide for disabled soldiers returning home--this was the beginning of a massive expansion of the pension system.  By 1892, it was possible for any white man to receive a pension as long as he could prove he had served in the Union army, and pensions amounted to around half of the federal budget!
And the women?
The women are a different story.
Until 1892, if a woman wanted a pension, she applied for a Special Act of Congress.  It wasn't until the late 1880s that legislation was put forward that would allow women who served as nurses for at least six months to receive a pension.  The Army Nurses Pension Act finally passed in 1892.  In the intervening 27 years, however, hundreds of women applied for pensions.  I want to find out who these women were.  Where did they come from? What was their economic status?  Were they employed?  Were they single, widowed, married and with children?  What drove them to apply for a pension?  Did they succeed or did they fail?  Is there a reason behind their success or failure?  When widows or blacks applied for pensions Congress often played the moralizer: successful petitioners were respectable, literate, and, at least for women, dependent (i.e. still a widow--you could not remarry or they yanked the pension).  Did Congress play the same game with the nurses?
Then there's the Pension Act itself.  What was the drive behind the legislative push?  Why did Congress pass it?  Was this just Congress finally realizing that if the men were getting pensions right and left, they'd better let the women in on the deal too? (Somehow I doubt that...)  Or was there a greater political movement behind the Pension Act?  Were women, in short, becoming politicized, and becoming major political actors in their own right?
The best way to answer these questions is to look first at the pension records themselves.  So, for the next five weeks, I will be pulling pensions as close to 24/7 as I can get.  Every night (knock on wood), I'll report my findings here.
So, here's to five weeks of successful research.  Wish me luck!