Esther Graves

Going through this file reminded me of one of the reasons I post about these women--not just to share their stories, to pull this women out of the shadows, and preserve and share those stories somewhere so they don't disappear into the shadows again.  It's also to gather information, to reach out, because there is no one way I can tell each story on my own.  And because if I don't, Esther Graves will likely remain something of an unknown.

Pension File: Cert. 120147
P.O.: Bowdoinham, ME
Service: regimental nurse with the 3rd Maine
Applied: 1868
Status: Accepted (SA)

This file was practically empty.  Now in some cases, that's entirely normal.  I've come across files with as few as seven papers.  But the difference is, all the necessary paperwork is there, I can watch the bureaucratic machinery at work, so to speak.  Not with Graves.
Graves' paperwork went missing in 1875.
So what little do we know about her?  The pension records reveal that she died December 28, 1888, that to that point she'd been receiving an $8 pension, which she'd received in 1868, but which Congress backdated to January 1, 1865, which suggests she ended the war destitute, very ill, or both.  We also know she lived in Bowdoinham after the war.  But that is it.
The census records were a little more helpful.  The 1870 Census shows her living in Bowdoinham, working as a milliner.  By 1880, she'd expanded a bit, and was running a boarding house while keeping up with her millinery.  Without an idea of how the milliner business was going, however, its hard to say if taking in boarders was a sign that she needed the extra income, was a budding entrepreneur, or simply wanted company.  We also know she was a Universalist--she is mentioned in passing in Our Women Workers: Women Eminent in the Universalist Church by Mrs. E.R. Hanson.
But none of these tell me what she did in the army.
There are days I thank my lucky stars that people during the late 19th and early 20th century expressed a keen interest in local history, and wrote dozens of books on their town's history.  Where would we be without The History of the Town of Bowdoinham, 1762-1912?  This books is, as far as I know, is the only piece of evidence that tells us anything about Graves' wartime experiences.  "She went out upon her own responsibility," author Silas Adams wrote, not something you usually see in regimental nurses, but not unknown either.  Graves served all four years of the war, following the 3rd until midway through 1862 when she was transferred to Port Royal Island.  Most of the time she received no pay.  She came out of the service with just $24, all she had saved after four years of hard labor--that boarding house is starting to look like an economic necessity.
Adams also mentions there was a second female nurse in the regiment: Sarah Sampson.  There is much better documentation for Sampson than Graves, but I have yet to find anything that links the two other than their simultaneous service in the 3rd.  For now, though, Sampson and the 3rd Maine remain my best leads on Graves.  Hopefully I'll be able to turn up something!

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.

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!

Amanda Stokes

Pension File: 485143, 243304
P.O.: Lebanon, Ohio
Service: regularly commissioned nurse, serving primarily in Tennessee
Applied: 1883
Status: Accepted (special act)

I was plowing through files today to flesh my first chapter and pulled Stokes's file.  It's a thin file--since hers was a special act the pension file itself is depressingly sparse, and the legislative file is one letter asking for her papers to be returned, so, of course, nothing there.  But when I googled her name to see if she had a file somewhere elsewhere or maybe a published memoir, I got several hits for a DUV post named for her out in her native Ohio.  All of the sites have extensive biographies on Stokes, but there was no mention of her pension file, so here is my small contribution based on what I gleaned from her files.
Amanda Stokes was working as a school teacher in Ohio when the Civil War broke out.  She volunteered her services almost immediately through her local Representative, Thomas Corwin, and was commissioned in the fall of 1861.  The file doesn't list specifically where she served, but does state she spent most of her service in Tennessee.  As a commissioned nurse, Stokes was technically supposed to be paid, but, as her senate report put it, "because of the ignorance or carelessness of the surgeons in making the necessary reports of their employes [sic]" she often went without (did you expect anything less?).  When she was paid, she used that money to purchase delicacies for the wounded she tended. All very typical.
None of the women who applied for special acts before the push for the ANPA began in 1886 escaped the war without some sort of physical scar.  Stokes wasn't captured or injured by shot or shrapnel like some of her fellow petitioners, but she definitely did not come out better for it.  In March, 1865--one month before the war ended! She was this close to getting out unharmed!--Stokes and another hospital nurse loaded themselves and a patient into an ambulance wagon and set off from Knoxville to Lookout Mountain.  To get there, they had to cross a river, and on this particular day the waters had risen, almost completely immersing the bridge.  The ambulance driver apparently thought he could make it and urged the team onward...and off they went over the edge.  Down went the wagon into the mud, with the occupants fighting to get free.  Luckily everyone managed to get to shore--several soldiers on the nearby shore pushed a log into the water so that Stokes could grab onto it and float to safety--but apparently Stokes's near-death experience left her deaf in one ear, and in her petition she complained of rheumatism and neuralgia in her head and neck, which she claimed were the result of the accident.
Which brings us to her special act.  Again, very little.  We know her application was accepted on May 31, 1883, and she was granted $15 a month.  At the time she was 60 years old, 5'2", with auburn hair and black eyes.  She died only two years later.
Like I said, there are some very detailed biographies out there on this woman--one of them even as a picture of her--so if you want more details, I highly suggest you look them up.  Otherwise, I am off to tackle chapter one (rough draft due tomorrow!).  Probably no update tomorrow night--it's homecoming here and my room is right next to party central, so I doubt I'll be able to hear myself think, let alone do work.  Until Monday!

Nancy Carey

Pension File: 438800, 505152
P.O.: Charlotte, Michigan
Service: Regimental nurse in Co. G, 105th New York from March, 1862, to March, 1865
Applied: 1890
Status: Accepted (special act)

I like Ancestry and Google far too much.
The fruits of tonight's rabbit hole: one pension file, supplemented with two census records and a very, very unique auto-biographical letter published posthumously by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society.
Nancy Carey was born Nancy Cornell on August 13, 1812 in Lewiston, New York, where her father was stationed at the fort.  On July 17th, 1832, she married C.L. Carey, a missionary amongst the Indians, and began almost thirty years of cross-country adventures.  The way Carey tells it in her letter, her husband was always selling her possessions, especially her horse teams, and moving his family all over the west.  Carey also had to deal with her growing brood of children: seven all told.  Whenever someone was deathly ill, however, they returned to their original home in New York.  Mr. Carey died there in 1850, just a few months after the death of their infant son, David.
The family settled in Tuscarora where her boys finished their schooling.  When the war broke out, 18 boys from the school decided to enlist, including two of Carey's boys, Joseph (22) and Calvin (19).  She doesn't say the reason for her decision, but Carey decided to go with her boys and serve as a nurse for the regiment, meeting them at Alexandria, Virginia in the spring of '62 just a few months after they were mustered in.  She had been there three weeks when she suffered a heat stroke working at the hospital in Warrington, Virginia, and was bedridden for two weeks.  After she recovered, she tried to join her regiment which had moved on to Culpepper, but apparently took a wrong turn.
This is where it gets interesting (and here I'm cursing myself for not having the legislative file because then I could see if she uses this story in her application, and see if she has any proof to back it up!).  The following is quoted in full from a letter Carey wrote to her children before she died, and published by the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society:

"They gave me a horse from the corral and I started for Culpepper.  Instead of taking the right hand road, I took the left and rode into Lee's Guerillas.  They said I was a northern woman and I said "Yes, and you are a southern man."  One man reached for my bridle and I wheeled my horse and when I turned and rode away they shot my horse in the flank near Waterloo Bridge.  I jumped from my horse and was captured.  They took me to Lee and Longstreet at Waterloo Bridge.  When they got me there, they bound my hands behind my back.  I remained with my hands bound four days and I was fed by a colored lady, Jenny Mack.  Then I sent for Stonewall Jackson, whom I had known at my old home.  He came and soon as he came he knew me.  He asked where my boys were.  They were at Culpepper.  He ordered my hands untied.  When united, my shoulders and arms were very lame, so he ordered Jenny to bathe me with brandy, while they were getting dinner.  He wrote a letter to Abe Lincoln and I carried it to him.  After dinner we started on horseback, he holding me on my horse, to Strausburg station, there I was to take the cars for Washington.  I got to Washington and stopped at Aurallia Hotel. I sent for Abe Lincoln and he came.  I gave him the letter Jackson wrote.  He treated me very kindly, and while there, he paid my expenses at the hotel.  While there Mr. Lincoln gave me an umbrella, with a compass in the handle, which I prize very highly.  From there I joined my regiment at Culpepper.  I remained with them until after the battle of Antietam.  There is where I met William McKinley..."

The Society also added this to the end of Carey's article:

"Mrs. Carey's father was a Knight Templar, her husband a Mason and she belonged to the order of the Eastern Star.  She knew both Gens. Lee and Longstreet were Masons and was sure they would protect her.  On making her sign to them they both responded and came to her relief, and assuring her captors that she was no spy but a nurse doing work ordered her release."

I'm honestly not sure quite what to make of all this. It's a fabulous story, but I'm skeptical as to how much of it as actually true.  Carey mentions the sunstroke in her pension application.  In fact, she had a doctor, Charles A. Merritt, fill out a surgeon's certificate when she first applied in 1882 which claims that as a result of the sunstroke she lost sight in both eyes.  Merritt wrote at the bottom of the application: "I find the above applicant an old lady not well preserved for one of her years.  Nervous system weak and instable.  Complains of vertigo and pain in head and spine."  I have no idea what kind of long-term effects sunstroke has on the body, but I'm going to see my grandmother this weekend and she should know--she's a retired nurse.  As for the rest of it, they mention she was released by General Jackson in the report put before Congress, so apparently the Pension Committee believed it, as did the rest of Congress, but my eyebrows are still up near the ceiling.  I want hard evidence before I take anything this woman says for granted.  Which is why I am zeroing in on her legislative file when I go back to D.C.
Back to her pension file: Carey applied for a pension in 1882, citing her sunstroke and claiming she was 1/2 disabled (remember, the Bureau was using a graded system where depending on how badly you were disabled you received a certain amount).  The surgeon's certificate she filed with the claim gives us a rough idea of what she looked like: about five feet tall, 126 lbs, brown eyes, brown hair, dark complexion.  It also states that she worked as a nurse after the war--something I haven't been able to confirm using the census records.  In fact, the 1880 has her listed as having no occupation, while her widowed daughter kept house.  Anyway, the application was rejected since Carey had no legal title to a pension at the time.  So Carey started work on a special act.  The act passed in 1890, and Carey received a $12 pension which she drew until her death on August 16, 1909.  Her daughter Etta applied for reimbursement for funeral costs and medical expenses, which was granted, and the file closes.
Which means I need to get my hands on that legislative file!
By the way, the article also mentions that the umbrella Lincoln gave to Carey, as well as a lantern she used in the army, were given to the Historical Society and placed on display.  I shall have to see if they're still there.

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!!

Charlotte Bradford

Hey, all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while--it's been a little hectic.  But I promise, I have been working.  I went in to Boston yesterday to look at some Dix papers at Harvard, and I'm planning on hitting the state Historical Society some time this week.  I also finished transcribing everything I found at Schlesinger, and the legislative papers on the Pension Act I found in D.C.  I even started going through the 1888 petition, looking at state/Department reports to get a sense of where support for the bill was coming from.  The best part, though, was going to Duxbury with Mum last week to see the Charlotte Bradford papers. Can you say "jackpot?"  Because I nearly yelled it when I saw what was in that file.
Backing up: here's what I know about her from the pension file (yes, I'm being mean. So?)

Pension File: 777413, 486398 (Special Act)
P.O.: Duxbury, Massachusetts
Service: hospital boat 'Elm City', various hospitals in D.C., and the Sanitary Home in D.C.
Applied: 1890
Status: Accepted

The file doesn't contain a great deal, since I never located the legislative file.  According to the House Report, Bradford was seventy-six years old and one of three maiden sisters living together in Duxbury when she applied for a Special Act in 1890.  She'd volunteered her services as a nurse in April, 1862, and continued to serve until 1865, by which time she was matron of the Sanitary Home (not technically a hospital, more like an inn with medical facilities where soldiers could find a quick meal or spend a few days and rest before continuing on).  The only other thing of note in Bradford's file was a note in the House Report that Bradford was briefly mentioned in Frank Moore's book, "Women of the War," published in 1866.

Charlotte Bradford (Courtesy of the Duxbury HS)

I don't much care for Frank Moore. Regardless, the man always leaves a paper trail (Duke has a small collection of his papers which I've used before, and I'm pretty sure there are other collections out there).  So, I plugged Bradford's name in to Google to see what was out there.  That was when I found the collection at Duxbury.  It is a spectacular collection.  Bradford wrote her sisters regularly when she left for D.C. in '62, and continued to write them until she returned home in '65--which means there are a good number of letters..  Bradford also kept a diary from July, 1863, to some time in '64, and another diary of her time on the hospital boats in Virginia.  There's also an account book where she recorded sheets and pillows sent out for cleaning for the Sanitary Home, as well as who was visiting (like "Emily Smith visited her brother, Jacob Smith, 1st MA"); a book entitled "Copperheads" which depicts various nasty things happening to Copperheads in caricature; several USSC publications; a soldier's pocket bible; and almost a dozen pencil sketches of the Virginia landscape and camp life.  There was even a cookbook for Mum to study!  Oh, and since her nephew was Frederick C. Knapp, director of the USSC Special Relief Department (which ran homes like the Sanitary House), some of his papers are included as well.
Specific to my research though, were three documents: Bradford's pension certificate, a form letter from the Bureau that accompanied the certificate, and a telegram from Massachusetts Representative Elijah A. Morse.  It reads simply: "Pension passed house ten oclock tonight under suspension rules upon my motion and now only awaits signature of president certain."
I've been immersed in the pension process for months, but I've never felt this...connected to the process.  I don't quite know how to say it, only that I felt for the first time that I was dealing with a human being at both ends, rather than a faceless Bureau employee.  I could see the process, read the dialogue, if you will, between Bradford and Morse, trying to get this thing passed.  None of my other Special Act files have yielded any evidence of this.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that between the telegram and the letters, Bradford is more human to me, more real, than almost any of the other women I've studied.  I just hope I can do the same for the rest.
Moving on before I get sentimental.  I'm heading back to Duxbury at some point to go through the collection again--my camera battery died before I got too far into the collection and I forgot to bring my charger, or a back-up.  I'm also visiting the Maine Historical Society for Ellen Tolman's letters on Friday or Saturday--Mum's been craving a trip to the beach, and Dad wants to go bookshopping, so we're making it a two-day trip.  No worries, the research comes first, then the beach.
One last thing: Bradford has a facebook page.  Plug her name in and take a look--the curator takes an excerpt from her diary every day and posts it.  it's wonderful reading.

Clara B. Hoyt

Pension File: 1133681
P.O.: Rush Center, Kansas
Service: Nurse at Columbian College Hospital and Point of Rocks Hospital
Applied: 1891
Status: Rejected

This is one the annoying files where you know there's more somewhere, but for whatever reason it's impossible to find.  Hoyt has a legislative file--and an interesting one at that--but her pension file is MIA.  I've requested it twice, and each time I've gotten a rejection slip.  I am not happy.
A brief of sketch of Hoyt based on what her legislative file contains: Hoyt served as a nurse under the direction of Dorothea Dix under her maiden name, Clara B. Clark, from the fall of 1864 to around the 20th of May, 1865.  After the war, Clara married and moved from her home in New York to Kansas.  In 1889 she contacted Congressman Ingalls about obtaining a pension through a Special Act.  Ingalls did what he could, and the bill was brought before the Senate twice, one in May, 1890, and again in December, 1891, but each time it was referred back to Committee.  Search me as to why.  Once the 1892 Act passed, Hoyt applied for a pension through the Bureau rather than a Special Act--and as a result, the file ends, which is why I'd so like to get my hands on that file!  I know her claim was rejected, since her pension file number doesn't have a certificate number (the first number, and generally the only one, is the application number, and the second is the certificate number, only given when a person is granted a pension).
Here come the surprises:
First, another reason why I'd love to get that pension file: Hoyt's attorney was named Ellen S. Tolman of Lawrence, Massachusetts  Unless I'm reading that name incorrectly, or Ellen was originally a guy's name ("Oh, Ashley, Ashley!!"), we have a female lawyer on our hands!  There's also the question of why Hoyt hired an attorney living in Massachusetts when she herself lived in Kansas.
Second, the WRC made a guest appearance in the file.  This time it wasn't Annie Wittenmyer, it was Sarah E. Fuller, a former president and Secretary of the National Pension Committee.  In 1890, Fuller wrote Ingalls a letter in support of Hoyt's claim, and attached an "Army Nurses Blank" provided by the WRC.  My guess is that the WRC used these forms in their own pension process--the WRC provided pensions to its members, but emphasized these were supposed to be temporary relief.  The blank asks who commissioned the nurse, dates of enrollment and discharge, age at enrollment, if the applicant has any papers to back her claim, her pecuniary circumstances, marital status, state of health, and how employed.  That's how I know that Hoyt suffered from rheumatism and catarrh, and her pecuniary circumstances were "at present not flattering."  It also presents another research possibility--where are the WRC-issued pensions, and can I use the information in those files to supplement what I've gathered from the Archives?  Another rabbit hole! Madness!

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!

A Very Large Petition

Today was one of those days where almost everything seemed to go right.
Negatives: it rained, and they pulled two soldiers instead of my nurses--apparently they had the same file numbers...
Positives: My people in legislation came through for me again.  Apparently, while pulling my nurses' files, he found two boxes on the Army Nurses Pension Act.  What was in them, you ask?
Something that made me grin like a maniac when I opened up the folder.
Petitions.  Hundreds of individual petitions sent out by the WRC to all its Corps to be signed, returned, and sent to Congress to demonstrate just how many people supported the Army Nurses Pension Act.  The names are those of WRC members, GAR members, and "friends of the soldiers."  So far, the vast majority of petitions are from Massachusetts, which, as a native, makes me extremely happy.  There was even one from the West Acton WRC Corps--West Acton is essentially Boxborough, my hometown.  There are also petitions from New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Kansas-there's a second box I haven't even touched so the list will grow.  I found a reference to the petition in a letter written by a WRC officer: there are over 160,000 signatures on the petition. 160,000!  Put this together with the 100,000 members of the WRC...I'm just going to let Sarah Fuller tell you.  She's the genius that put all this together, anyway.

"Our petition, 31,000 feet long, had the bonna fide signatures of 160,000 men and women of the different States, and the W.R.C. now numbers about 100,000 members, this with the endorsement of the National Pension Committee of the G.A.R. authorizing us to speak for the 500,000 comrades, gave us a backing of nearly 800,000 people.  Will our legislators disregard that force?"

Now, here's the thing.  Several other letters I've found suggest that the G.A.R. withdrew its support at one point because the WRC was asking for $25 pensions, and the G.A.R. supported $12 pensions.  The G.A.R was also rather hesitant to push for a pension for Mary Bickerdyke several years earier.  So, what exactly is the role of the G.A.R in getting this act passed, and why do they seem so hesitant at times to give it their support?

And you thought I was insane...

Today was a rough day.  Almost half my pulls were denied because the archivist couldn't find them (how they lost Sophronia Bucklin's pension file I'll never know), and I managed to leave my camera charger at the Archives.  Hopefully they won't throw it out.
On the other hand, I spoke to one of the researchers about finding papers relating to my Special Acts--the legislation rather than the pensions themselves.  Apparently the time between 1866 and 1892, the period I'm interested in, isn't very well documented, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Hopefully I'll know more by tomorrow.


Marie J. Blaisdell
(National Archives)

The Unfortunate Mr. Blaisdell
(National Archives)

I also had a rather large surprise to deal with.  Yesterday I put in a request for the pension of Marie J. Blaisdell.  There was nothing remarkable about the pension.  All I knew was that she'd filed her claim in 1892.  So, when they told me her pension file was seven folders...let me put it to you this way.  A typical pension file is one folder, and a skinny one at that.  Ten, twenty papers is typical, more if someone put in a claim for reimbursement after the death of the pensioner, or if the claim is contested and the would-be pensioner sends in affadavits.  But still, it only amounts to one folder.  Blaisdell's file is 45 pounds of paper crammed into 7 folders.  The staff has never seen anything like it.  So you bet I was hoping for something good.  And I got it. Both Marie and her husband served in the war: she as a nurse for nine months, he as a Brevet Lieutenant in the 5th Minnesota.  Marie came out just fine.  Her husband did not.  Shortly after the war ended he began to show signs of what they called "cerebral softening"--in other words, he'd gone insane.  If you listen to Blaisdell's accounts, he was a real basket case: he had frequent mood-swings, sometimes becoming violent and threatening her.  He'd babble inanely, or lose control of his bowels.  Sometimes he'd run off into the woods and she and the neighbors would have to go and pull him out.  At one point I believe a doctor said he claimed to see balls of fire floating in front of his face, and refused to be left alone.  Frankly, it reads like a bad Victorian novel (think Bertha in Jane Eyre's attic).  Mrs. Blaisdell finally had her husband committed in the 80s.

The result was that her husband's pension now shot up to $75 a month--a typical pension was $8 or $12.  And then, a new administration came in, and its new policies cut Blaisdell's $75 a month to $10 on the grounds that he was not actually insane, or, alternately, that his insanity was not a direct result of his service (they liked to contradict themselves).  After that, well, Mrs. Blaisdell wasn't exactly easy to live with to begin with.  Now, she began a twenty year campaign to have her husband's pension restored to $75 a month and to collect what eventually amounted to $20000 in arrears.  It was a circus.  The papers took to calling her the 'Minnesota Blizzard,' or the 'Queen of the Northwest.'  Someone tried to have her committed.  Everyone at the Pension Bureau avoided her.  Mrs. Blaisdell wrote very bad poetry, tragic tales of her woe and suffering for the papers to lap up, and dozens and dozens of letters to presidents and Congressmen.  She's a stubborn, money-grubbing, self-centered, outrageous woman.  And I can't even tell if she won the case or not!

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!