Georgiana Smith

Pension File: 695671, 550217
P.O.: 145 Haverhill St, Lawrence, MA
Service: contract nurse at Lovell General Hospital, Portsmouth Grove, RI, in Wards 16, 18, and 20
Applied: 1889
Status: Accepted

Every once in a while you come across a file that makes things a little more personal, a little more tangible.  You find a personal connection that reminds you you're only a few degrees removed from everything that happened 150 years ago.
No, there's no long-lost family relative in the file (though I did find out a few weeks ago that a distant cousin of mine served as a nurse--she's on the WRC lists, so guess what I'm looking into next?).  But like I said, it's a small world.
So, Georgiana Smith, born Georgiana Butterfield, daughter of Pitts Butterfield and Lucy Damon, in October, 1820, in Dedham, Massachusetts.  She married Isacchus Smith and had two children, one of whom died young.  The other, a girl named for her mother, was born January 17, 1846.  Isacchus died sometime around 1855, leaving Georgiana to make her own way.  I think she ends up living with her brother and his family in Attleboro, but I'm not entirely sure--if it is her in the census record, her brother and mother are there, but no baby Georgianna...
In March, 1862, however, Georgiana volunteered her services at Lovell General Hospital in Portsmouth Grove, RI (again, I ask, what happens to her child while she's gone?!).  She was given charge of three wards: 16, 18, and 20.
This is where we get into the period documents.  Smith had several in her file: a pass, allowing her to come and go as necessary; a letter dated to 1864 recommending her for a leave of absence due to illness, and a testimonial.
Thrilling, right?
Here's why, in all my nerdiness, I'm excited about these documents.  First, the letter recommending

Lovell General Hospital

her for a leave of absence: usually I'm told these women were taken ill during their service thirty years after the fact, and a very brief description--rheumatism, a fever, worn down by service.  Unfortunately the letter doesn't provide details about the nature of Georgiana's illness, but now I have a sense of how that illness was dealt with in the moment--a recommendation from her superior, E.E. Brewster, the lady Supt. of Lovell, for a leave of absence, and just so all formalities and bureaucratic niceties are covered, she even includes the date of her last leave of absence: August (the letter was written in November, '64).  Thirty years removed, its hard to get a sense of the day-to-day operation of the hospital, but here I get a tiny snapshot.
The other thing I found exciting were the testimonials.  Again, most testimonials are given thirty years after the fact, and Georgiana has two of those, but every so often the soldiers at a given hospital decide to write up something for their ward nurse, and, hopefully, the nurse keeps it.  The boys in Ward 18 were among that number.  Edward Kent (13th VRI--probably the Veteran Reserve Corps), Benjamin Sweetser (56th MA), Ephraim Esty (1st MA H.A.), Edwin Flagg (57th MA), Edgar Riddell (2nd US S.S.), Josiah Robbins (22nd MA) all signed,  So did Sylvanus Hunt, 12th MA.
Something like this is a potential gold mine for me.  Given how thin on the ground documents relating to nurses are, any name that appears in the file is a potential new source of information.  And since I've already found several instances of networking between nurses, and between them and their former patients, I have high hopes for this lot.
This is also a non-academic nerd moment.  All the men, for whatever reason, not only listed the unit they served with, but also their home town.  Sylvanus Hunt was from my home town.  All I know about him is that he was a draftee, wounded at Spotsylvania, returned to service following a stint at Lovell, and mustered out in June, 1865.  My home town has been pretty thorough going through all their wartime records and posting them online, so there's no leads with Sylvanus, but it's still a reminder--even my sleepy little town had a role to play.
Back to Georgiana.  The trip home must not have been enough, because Georgiana mustered out in March, '65.  From there, we lose the trail again, until 1889, when Georgiana filed for a pension through the Bureau, with Ellen Tolman as her attorney.  Since we hadn't gotten to the ANPA yet, the Bureau summarily rejected it, and Georgiana started the process of getting a special act through Congress--which is why we have all those wonderful wartime documents.  Congress passed the bill on March 27, 1891, awarding Georgiana $12 a month, and Georgiana went on living her quiet life.  At some point she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law (the 1900 census shows them living together), and presumably she remained with them until her death on December 3, 1904.  She's buried in Bellevue Cemetery, in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Ellen Forbes Tolman

Pension File: 574183, 335290 (Special Act)
P.O.: Lawrence, Massachusetts
Service: various hospitals around D.C. from July, 1861 to February, 1863
Applied: 1886
Status: Accepted

Brace yourselves: here's a pension file I don't actually have. Horror!  So why do I have her up here?  Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea Tolman existed.  I didn't find her in my pre-D.C. survey for special acts, nor did she turn up while I was going through legislative files.  Instead, I found her through something of a back door.  While I was in D.C. she turned up in one of the files (Clara Hoyt) as a pension attorney.  I put her on the back burner though in favor of other rabbit holes.  When she turned up as attorney for two more women, and a witness for a third, I knew I had to do some serious digging.  Until that point, I had no idea she was ever a nurse!  But the more I dug, the more I realized I needed to include her in my study.
Here's a brief sketch based on what I've been able to find: According to her petition to Congress for a Special Act, Ellen Forbes (her maiden name) left her home in Maine just after the Battle of Bull Run to nurse in Washington.  She showed no signed of stopping until February, 1863, when she contracted typhus.  In her petition to Congress she wrote that "her attack of fever was proceeded by convulsions, and for twelve days thereafter all was a blank to her."  Tolman pulled through, but malarial abscesses kept her bed-bound for several more months, and on crutches for several more.  She returned to Washington in September, but new abscesses appeared and she returned home, sick again.
Here's the silver lining to the cloud: in February, 1864, Ellen Forbes married Eleazer Tolman from the 2nd Maine.  Schultz hints that they met while Tolman was in the hospital in D.C.--he was suffering from pleurisy and was discharged in 1862.  The two settled down in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had three children.  Tolman applied for, and was granted, a $25 pension in 1886, endorsed by VP Hamlin and several respected veterans.  Then, in 1892, she pops in three completely unrelated pension files: Clara B. Hoyt, Emily Taylor, and Georgiana Smith.  There is nothing I can find to link these three women together other than the fact they served as nurses.  They never served in the same hospital, lived in the same area, nothing.  I'm betting, though, that it's a connection through the WRC or the Army Nurses Association.  The only way to find out for sure is to go look through her papers at the Maine Historical Society.  I love it when my nurses leave a paper trail.