- Mariam Hooper Adams
- Louisa May Alcott
- Clara Barton
- Mary Ann Bickerdyke
- Sophronia Bucklin
- Amy Morris Bradley
- Margaret Breckinridge
- Kady Brownell
- Elizabeth Blackwell
- Cloe Annette Buckel
- Dorothea Dix
- Sarah Dysart
- Annie Etheridge
- Abigail H. Gibbons
- Mary Morris Husband
- Hannah Chandler Ropes
- Adelaide W. Smith
- Mary Edwards Walker
- Katherine W. Wormeley
Mary Ann Bickerdyke was a 44 year old widow from Illinois
when the Civil War began.She worked tirelessly throughout
the war in many areas. She coordinated the shipment of medical
supplies and nonperishables. She also worked in
correcting deplorable sanitary conditions in hospitals;
as well as exposing graft and corruption and incompetence
among the medical staff. Mary's love for the common
soldier soon gained her a nickname that she relished,
"Mother Bickerdyke". One wounded soldier wrote home that,
"Mother Bickerdyke is perhaps the most unusual. She makes
generals obey her commands. For the sake of "her boys"
she bowled over lesser officials like ninepins. Time and
again she risked her life at the front, working herself to
the point of exhaustion."
Louisa May Alcott best known as the author of Little
Women was a nurse at Georgetown Union Hospital
in Washington DC beginning December 1862.
She continued to nurse as long as her health
permitted. She left her position in 1863, when she
contracted typhoid fever from her patients. During
her recuperation, she wrote of her nursing experiences
in her first published book called HOSPITAL
SKETCHES.The book is valuable for its vivid
descritions of medical activities during the war.
Appalled by the lack of sanitation, Louisa
described the military hospital as a "perfect
pestilence box."
as well as the mini-bios above
were taken from a wonderful little book
WHITE ROSES-Stories of Civil War Nurses
by Rebecca D. Larson