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.