Alice Kelley

Pension File: 601310, 353717
P.O.: 1235 Pennsylvania Ave., D.C.
Service: 5th Corps Field Hospital, Navy Yard
Applied: 1886 (Special Act)
Status: Accepted

Since I've finished the database, I don't have a set system for going through my pensions and posting here, so I'm pulling random files, and double-checking my database as I go.  Tonight's pick is Alice Kelley, one of my special act pensioners.  She also lived on Pennsylvania Ave, right across from the Post Office building--which means I walked by her home practically every single day this summer!
Generally army nurses acted independently of one another or in groups.  If they reported to someone, it was either the hospital doctor, or someone hundreds of miles away.  Kelley, however, worked as personal assistant to Harriet Fanning Read, a well-known army nurse, and a poet.  The two attached themselves to the Fifth Corps in the summer of 1862, and followed the corps through every campaign until September, 1864, when Kelley was ordered to report to the Provost in D.C.  She spent the last few months of the war nursing men at the Navy Yard per the Provost's orders.  And, typically, after that the record goes blank.
Kelley was one of the nurses who managed to get her pension act passed before Senator Cockrell et. co. passed the unwritten rule that nurses could only get $12 pensions.  Because of that, she managed to get $20.  Apparently this wasn't enough, because when Kelley heard that Mary Hill had received a $25 pension in '89 for her service, she demanded an increase, declaring she was "entitled to like pension, and have been from the first allowance."  And to give her claim a little more weight, she had Hill give a statement on her behalf, stating that Kelley's services were "of the precise character of my own...[and that she] very much needs and deserves the relief she asks.  She also had her doctor, Edgar Janney, testify to her inability to support herself.  Then, in case she still didn't have enough support, Harriet Corts, Secretary for the Army Nurses Association, wrote a letter endorsing her (Kelley was apparently a member).  In fact, if I'm right about the hand-writing, Corts actually wrote Hill's testimony (Hill could sign her name, but nothing beyond that), and Kelley's petition (Kelley signed with a mark--probably illiterate).  Networking!
Despite her efforts, Kelley did not receive the increase, and continued to draw the $20 until her death in 1891.  What struck me looking at the date was something one of Kelley's witnesses wrote: "This noble woman is now growing aged, her feebleness is increasing daily; she could not long be a pensioner on the bounty of her country; but if her few remaining years could be made more comfortable by a feeling of independence and the knowledge that at last her services had been recognized by those whom she had served so faithfully and so well in their time of need, then would both justice and charity have been satisfied."  So what was it? (And here I play the cynic).  Was it the fact she could not long be a pensioner?  Or was it charity and justice?  If I can answer that question...well, then I'll have my thesis.  Or part of it, anyway.  So much information!

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.

Hannah Babb Hutchins

Pension File: 816506, 505146 (Special Act)
P.O.: Freeport, Maine
Service: one of Dix's nurses in Washington, D.C.
Applied: 1886
Status: Accepted

Hutchins was one of over twenty Special Acts I found today (let's hear it for the guys in legislation! I don't know how they find this stuff, but whatever they're doing, it's working!).  Her story is simple enough compared to others I've described here: her husband and four children died just before the war began, and she enlisted as a nurse in June of 1862.  Hutchins served for three years and three months in various hospitals in D.C., in particular Armory Square and Harewood Hospital, and (here's a rarity) was paid for her services, though all of it went to purchasing things for the soldiers.  On New Years Day, 1865, Hutchins slipped on the steps between wards at Harewood Hospital and fractured her ribs.  It was enough to keep her confined to her quarters for a month.
Hutchins was discharged in May, 1865 and went home to Maine.  She married again, to one Solomon S. Hutchins, who died in 1880 and left her with no money to her name.  By this time she was into her seventies, her injury kept her from supporting herself, and the chronic diarrhea she had also contracted from her wartime service was growing worse.
In 1886, Hutchins applied to Congress for a pension, believing "she is justly entitled to aid from the nation precisely as if she had been a soldier and been incapacitated from labor by injury received in the line of duty."  Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that since Hutchins was paid while enlisted as a nurse, she did not merit a pension larger than $12.
I give you an extract from one of many letters in the same vein sent from Hutchins to her friend Harriet Corts:

"You, and also Mr. Reed, want to know my financial condition; --I got the 12 dollars pension last week, $36., paid $15 interest on mortgage; $14.33 to Gore & Davis, $5 to Dr. Burbank, I had $1.62 left; there are debts and must be paid.  I never was rich, and surely never was in such straitened circumstances...This has been a very hard winter, it is so very col,d and coal $8 per ton.  It seems as though I should perish, and this diarrhea,--up 4 and 6 times in a night; hardly get warm before i have to get up again. My living is mostly Graham crackers, it don't take any fuel toc ook them; it is not very luscious diet to live on!  Hattie, you  don't think I had better go to the poor-house now? I don't want to go there, it would not be anyt credit to the country.  Oh dear! I don't know what to do, can you tell me? what in the world is there for me to do? Oh please let me hear from you soon...P.S. This is very humiliating to let anybody know how reduced I am; it makes me very nervous to think of it..."

Luckily for Hutchins, she had a good friend in Harriet Corts.  And Corts happened to be the Secretary for the Army Nurses Assocation.  The ANA, as far as I can make out, was a Dix brainchild, an organization of women who had worked for her during the "last unpleasantness."  It was also the other major organization mixed up in trying to get the Army Nurses Pension Act passed, and supporting various pension claims.  Hutchins's pension file is the first time I've seen the ANA petitioning on behalf of a nurse.  There's no fancy letterhead like the WRC, but from the little I've seen it's much more aggressive. There are a couple more nurses I pulled today who were also endorsed by the ANA--they're high on my list of nurses to go over.
Anyway, back to Hutchins and the ANA.  Corts rallied the troops, sent in evidence pertaining to Hutchins' desperate need for an increased pension, and wrote her own biting letter to the Chairman of the Pension Committee.  The end result?  Hutchins's pension was increased to $25 in 1888.
So, my question is: where is the ANA later on in the fight for the Pension Act?  Why can't I find more on them?  And what exactly is their angle?
So many questions!!!