Charlotte Ross

Pension: 1130592
P.O.: 80 Bloomington St., Indianapolis, and 1003 N. 4th Street, Arkansas City, Kansas
Service: contract nurse as regimental nurse for the 18th Indiana, then at Nashville General Hospital No. 23 and Murfreesboro General Hospital No. 7; served the duration of the war
Applied: September 8, 1892
Status: Abandoned

I've been seeing a surprising number of files like Ross's lately--maybe it's because I've been going through some old files, trying to track down burials and death dates.  Ross is one of the women who died while her claim was pending.
Pensions were loaded with social meaning in the nineteenth century--were you the 'deserving poor,' whatever the government and your community decided that meant, and thus qualified for a pension?  Could you bring yourself to discuss your wartime service as something other than charity, as something that deserved recognition and compensation from the government? Could you accept charity?  Could you make certain aspects of your private life public and admit that your living conditions were desperate, and take the shame that came with that?  But sometimes I need a reminder that buried underneath all that social meaning is often a very simple issue: many of these women are old, and they need these pensions to survive.
Charlotte Ross served during the war as Charlotte Gill (her maiden name).  Interestingly, I haven't been able to find any family members in the 18th Indiana (yet!) that would explain her presence--she mentioned she was attached to Co. K, so I'll be digging deeper into them.  Gill remained with the regiment until July, 1862, during which time she participated in every march, and every battle, including the Battle of Pea Ridge.  That July, however, she attached herself to General Hospital No. 23 in Nashville, while the regiment continued on to Arkansas.  Gill continued to work in Nashville until April, 1863, when she transferred to General Hospital No. 7 in Murfreesboro, where it seems she remained for the rest of the war.
Following the war, Gill married twice: the first to a man named Overturf (there's not much on him in the file), and then Thomas Ross, whom she married on November 24, 1873.  I might have found them in the 1880 census--there are a couple Charlottes and Thomas' in the Indianapolis area, and, to add to the confusion, it looks like one of them had a child prior to this marriage, because in the 1880 census, Thomas and Charlotte have a son, Archibald, who is seventeen years old.  That puts his D.O.B. at around 1863.  It's possible Charlotte was the mother, but given she served out the war, and there's no record of a name change in the pension file it seems more likely that Archibald is Thomas' child from a previous marriage, or they adopted him...or that it's not them at all!
At the very least, she was known to the WRC; she and her friend/fellow nurses, Harriet Hopp, whom she'd worked with in Nashville and Murfreesboro, were both listed on the WRC's nurse list from 1888.  She and Hopp appear to have kept in touch--Hopp testified during Ross's application.
Ross applied for her pension in September, 1892.  The Bureau could only find enough evidence in the records to prove three months service, so she sent in testimony from Hopp, as well as one of the soldiers from the regiment whom she'd nursed, Allen Kelley.  "I am in pressing need of it," Ross wrote Commissioner Raum that December, "and if I am going to get it I would like to have it soon for I am very old and cant live all ways and would like to get it in time to enjoy it before I die so please let me hear from you soon."  Unfortunately, there must have been a miscommunication somewhere, because when the Bureau next wrote Ross they said she application was completed.  When she hadn't received anything by April, however, Ross, understandably concerned, wrote the Commissioner again.  "You stated in your last card that my [pension] was on completed file and will you please answer this and let me know what si the delay of me not getting my Pension will you Please hurry it up as I stand in great need of it and oblige me, yours in F C and L."  None of the previous letters had the F C and L at the end, and this letter is in a different hand, which makes me wonder if the WRC or a friend in the WRC had taken an interest in Ross's case...
Ross sent one more letter in May, again asking why her pension hadn't been sent and for the Commissioner to get back to her quickly.  Finally, someone in the office got back to her, asking for additional information, since Ross only appeared on the rolls for three months, and none of the testimonials she provided counted as competent authority.  The problem was that the Bureau sent the letter to the wrong address.  When the letter finally made its way to the correct address, it was delivered not to Ross, but to her only living heir.  Ross had died on May 15th, just two days after she'd sent her last letter.