Happy 4th of July Everyone!

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!

Clara Watson

Pension File: 1141792
P.O.: Ebenezer, Pennsylvania
Service: nurse at General Hospital 5, 6, and 7 at Murfreesboro, Tennessee from December 31st, 1863 to end of the war
Filed: 1892
Status: Rejected

Most nurses were well into their seventies when they applied for a pension--by extension, they were in their thirties or forties when they served in the war.  Clara Watson, however, was only 22 when she began to work as a nurse.  She was my age.  And she'd already given birth to two daughters, Susan and Melissa, and had just run away from her owner, Doctor Allison.
Clara was another escaped slave, just like Mehala Edwards.
According to her affidavits, Clara and her two daughters ran away from Dr. Allison's farm on the Manchester Turnpike just after the Battle of Stone River in 1862.  Shortly after she began working at General Hospital 5 in Murfreesboro.  The only compensation she received, she claimed, were her rations.  After a year she was transferred to General Hospital 6, where she was paid $2.50 a week--roughly the same as a regular enlisted nurse.  There's some confusion as to dates, but Watson claimed she was transferred to Hospital 7 in June, 1865, and served there until the close of the war.
Once she was discharged, a man named Frank Speedy took her and her daughters to Indiana County, Pennsylvania, where she settled down.  I checked the census records: in 1870, a woman matching Watson's description was listed in Conemaugh, Indiana County, living with her husband John Watson, a man thirty years her senior, as well as four children: Susan, Frank, Martha, and Banks.  Watson also appeared in the 1880, 1900, and 1910 census.  She apparently gave birth to 8 children, and outlived at least six of them.
Watson applied for a pension in 1892 based on her service in Murfreesboro.  She supplied the names of at least half a dozen doctors and hospital stewards who could testify to her work, and ensisted that someone had placed her name on the rolls on several occasions.  Guess what the Bureau said? "Sorry, no record exists, and most of the people you named are not in our records or are dead.  Got anything else?"  When Watson couldn't produce any additional proof, they rejected her claim--took them three years to tell her.  But Watson tried again.  She sent a letter in 1897 asking what more she could do to prosecute her claim other than getting rid of her attorney, Frank Donahue, who apparently had done a less than stellar job.  "I am entitled to [my pension]," she wrote, "and have furnish [sic] evidence so it is now over four years since I made application."  The same thing happened: no records, no affidavits, rejection.  Watson tried a last time in 1910, this time enlisting her local Congressman.  Third time's the charm, right?  Wrong.  This is the Pension Bureau we're talking about.  Watson never got her pension.
I know that at least two black women received a pension: Ann Stokes and Maria Bear Tolivar.  And I have at least three black women who were rejected.  Time to do some comparisons and see what let those two women succeed where others failed.

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!

Susan Barry

Pension File:  599141, 352072 (Special Act)
P.O.: San Francisco, CA
Service: served under Dix at at least 11 different hospitals from 1861 to 1864.
Applied: 1887
Status: Accepted

Susan Barry's file was really two files in one.  One was her husband's pension file; the other was hers.  Robert, the husband, emigrated from England as a child.  Susan was a native.  Robert enlisted in the Stokes Battery, Illinois Light Artillery; Susan was selected as a nurse in May of 1861 and began courses at Bellevue Hospital.  After two months, Dix assigned her to Alexandria, Virginia.  She stayed there for eight months before being transferred to Winchester.  From then on, every few months found her at a new hospital: Harpers Ferry, Georgetown, Aquia Creek, Murfreesboro--she was everywhere.  There's no indication in the records as to how Robert and Susan met, but the two were married in May, 1866, at Hoomer, New York.
Robert almost immediately began to suffer from neuralgia and a variety of other maladies which he traced back to his service.  The Bureau, however, didn't buy it until 1890, and in the meantime, Susan applied for a Special Act of her own.  In 1887, Congress granted her a $12 pension.  Once again, the file's a little sparse on exactly how Barry pushed through a Special Act, but given the trouble Robert was having getting his own pension, it was probably a good thing.  The Bureau didn't think his disabilities kept him from doing manual labor in any significant way, and there were allegations that his 'nervous prostration' was due to some excessive drinking.  Susan, however, supported her husband's claim, writing letters, signing affidavits, and helping with the special investigation launched in 1900.  Robert died in 1905 at the age of 67; Susan passed a few years later in 1912.
No big surprises, no intriguing mysteries or hints, just a simple story of a woman and her husband and their experiences.  Though...Susan has a special act file buried somewhere in the depths of the Archives--with four years of service, I bet there'll be some interesting finds!

51A-H10.1

Today promised to be a big day.  Wednesday is the first day of the week I can put in twenty pull requests instead of sixteen.  And this Wednesday I was going to finish Mary E. Walker's microfilm, and look at the rest of the 51st Congress Senate Private Acts and move on to the 52nd.  The cherry: legislation pulled 51A-H10.1, the Committee on Invalid Pension's file on the Army Nurses Pension Act.  All kinds of good things lined up.
And it didn't disappoint.  Walker is finished and I'm in the midst of transcribing the documents; the 51st and 52nd Congress Private Acts are done, and I have a couple extra nurses who weren't on my list. And 51A-H10.1 is photographed.  I feel virtuous.
51A wasn't what I expected though.  I was hoping for correspondance between committee members and members of the WRC arguing for support, letters between committee members debating the merits of the bill, or discussing who they needed to persuade and how to go about it.  I didn't get much of that, though.  There were two identical letters, sent to George Seney and D.B. Henderson by Kate B. Sherwood, the Chairman of the National Pension and Relief Committee for the WRC, presenting the Army Nurses Bill and asking for support.  There's no indication of whether or not either Congressman gave the bill their support.
There were also more of the petitions I'd found earlier--apparently Indiana sent theirs in late.  Their late arrival necessitated a letter from Armilla Cheney, the WRC treasurer explaining the situation, and a letter from Clara Barton to Mr. Cogswell forwarding them on to him.
I don't remember if I mentioned this in previous posts, but Barton was an active member of the WRC.  She served on the WRC Pension Committee until the bill finally passed, and also served as National Chaplain for a number of years.  She was so often in D.C. that the Pension Committee effectively made her their agent in the capitol.  What exactly being that agent entaled I didn't know until I read this letter, which reveals a little of what Barton was up to.  Apparently, the petitions I looked at earlier were sent to Barton, and she in turn sent them to Senator Blaire, the head of the Committee on Invalid Pensions and a strong advocate for the Nurses Pension Act.  When these stragglers arrived, Barton sent them on to Mr. Cogswell to add to the petition; as Barton put it, "from the size of that 'cart wheel' roll one would judge that it needed no further accessories--but vast as the sea is, the drops still fall in it and the little brooks flow to it, so I suppose it's all right."
I also found an intriguing little pamphlet tucked in the folder: Joint Resolution No. 3. from the General Assembly and Governor of Iowa, "asking Congress to enact a law providing for pensioning certain women enrolled as Army Nurses."
Any ideas why Iowa of all states is endorsing the Nurses Pension Act?

Mary A. Huff

Pension File: 1133684, 815217
P.O.: Nova Scotia
Service: Nurse at Carver Hospital, D.C.
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

I know I promised you Mary Walker, but her papers are a two-day project.  So, in the interim, I pulled out Mary Huff's file.
Mary Huff is one of those wonderful occasions where someone kept track of who served at the hospital, and the War Department managed to find it.  She served at Carver Hospital in Washington, D.C. from October 17th, 1864, to June 3rd, 1865 alongside a number of other women whose pension files I pulled, like Mary A. McKee, Waitie Harris, and Sarah Cowgill.  The catch (it's not a real blogpost if there wasn't a catch): the rolls listed her as a cook, which meant she didn't fall under the 1892 Act.  She was also no longer a resident of the US.  There's nothing in the file on the problems created by Huff living in Canada. There is, however, tons on the problem created by listing her as a cook.
In fact, it looks like the Bureau had a minor meltdown.  Huff's file is full of official letters, briefings, and legal decisions centered on the specifics of the 1892 Act.  I promise I'll try to keep the legalese to a minimum.
There were two major problems.  By 1892, many surgeons and stewards who could testified to a woman's service were dead, and nurses had to rely on the testimony of enlisted men and nurses.  The issue here was whether or not that testimony was sufficient to establish service under a competent authority.  The other problem was the exact status of the women who worked for Annie Wittenmyer in the special diet kitchens, since they served both as nurses and cooks--cooks, of course, being completely left out of the 1892 Act.
Hoke Smith, the Secretary of the Interior at the time, made the final legal ruling.  The "fact of service," or whether or not a woman served as a nurse under competent authority, could be proved by any competent witness, including enlisted men and nurses.  However, they did not have authority to employ nurses.  Self-explanatory.  As to the women employed by Wittenmyer,

"the dietary nurse sustains a relation to a patient which is much akin to that of a medical adviser.  Physicians are themselves constantly urging the efficiency of diet as a safeguard against disease as well as a remefy therefor.  It requires intelligence as well as delicate knowledge of the nature and effect of certain foods to fit a woman for such a position.  They often have, for this, a peculiar fitness, and the services rendered by such women are invaluable and entitled to great consideration."

Therefore, Smith considered their pensionable status under the Act "unquestionable."
There were also two substantial "opinions."  As dull as it sounds, the briefs answered some of the questions I kept asking as I went through the files.  One brief, an Opinion in re Nurse Pension Act acknowledged just how difficult it was to establish a nurse's service using service records or testimony.  Some times, no evidence could be found, and other times the record listed women as cooks, laundresses, waitresses--positions other than nurses, as was the case with Mary Huff.  They were listed as such, the opinion stated, "presumably in compliance with a request from the Surgeon General's Office, that [because] a larger number of nurses had been accepted in the Department...than had been intended," they should be listed under another name, but given the same pay.  The problem here was finding evidence to controvert the records.  Then there was my favorite: sometimes the records showed a woman paid for less than the required six months (usually because the records were spotty or the women signed vouchers allowing the Surgeon to draw their pay to buy things for the soldiers), but the woman claimed more than six months service.  And then there were the people whose homes were used as hospitals and they themselves worked as nurses.
What to do, what to do?
Here's the short answer.  Yes, you can get a pension if you are listed as something other than a nurse, so long as you can deliver proof and were appointed by a competent authority.  So, if you were listed as a cook, laundress, or opened your house, as long as you actually nursed, you come under the Act.  No, you can't deny a pension based solely on payment records (or lack thereof).  Payment records are only corroborative evidence.
So why do payment records still have so much 'oomph' in later records?  And why are Wittenmyer's nurses still having issues getting pensions a few years later?  In short, why do they make a somewhat hasty retreat on all these decisions within months?!