Mary Brady (1821-1864) [1] was a nurse in the American Civil War. She was the co-founder and president of the Ladies Association for Soldiers Relief.
Mary was born in Ireland in 1821. Little else is known about her life in Ireland. [1] [2]
Mary married an English attorney, Edward Brady, in Manchester England in 1846. The couple went on to have five children. [1] [2]
Brady and her husband immigrated to the United States in 1849. Her husband became a prominent Philadelphia attorney. [1] [2]
Brady volunteered at Satterlee Hospital in West Philadelphia, a facility that cared for up to 3,000 soldiers. [1] [2]
Brady co-founded Ladies Association for Soldiers Relief, an organization that provided support, care, and supplies for soldiers and hospitals. Brady first visited and distributed supplies to Philadelphia hospitals. She later expanded to other hospitals. She was the first woman to visit Alexandria, Virginia hospitals. [1] [2]
Brady also nursed soldiers on the front lines. She used a four-mule wagon for transportation and stopped where she saw red flags. Flags indicated the location of soldiers in need. [1] [2]
She ultimately visited about 40 hospitals and is said to have been in contact with up to 30,000 patients in two years. [1] [2]
Her travels took a toll on her health. After her fifth trip to the front lines, she arrived home weak.
She was diagnosed with a weak heart and died months later. Hundreds of soldiers attended her funeral. [1] [2]
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was an American nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, a teacher, and a patent clerk. Since nursing education was not then very formalized and she did not attend nursing school, she provided self-taught nursing care. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work and civil rights advocacy at a time before women had the right to vote. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973.
Dorothea Lynde Dix was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as a Superintendent of Army Nurses.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke, also known as Mother Bickerdyke, was a hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War and a lifelong advocate for veterans. She was responsible for establishing 300 field hospitals during the war and served as a lawyer assisting veterans and their families with obtaining pensions after the war.
Mary Livermore was an American journalist, abolitionist, and advocate of women's rights. Her printed volumes included: Thirty Years Too Late, first published in 1847 as a prize temperance tale, and republished in 1878; Pen Pictures; or, Sketches from Domestic Life; What Shall We Do with Our Daughters? Superfluous Women, and Other Lectures; and My Story of the War. A Woman's Narrative of Four Years' Personal Experience as Nurse in the Union Army, and in Relief Work at Home, in Hospitals, Camps and at the Front during the War of the Rebellion. She wrote a sketch of the sculptor Anne Whitney for Women of the Day and delivered the historical address for the Centennial Celebration of the First Settlement of the Northwestern States in Marietta, Ohio on July 15, 1788.
Nora Fontaine Maury Davidson was an American schoolteacher in Petersburg, Virginia. She is credited for holding the first Memorial Day ceremony in Petersburg, and as the inspiration for the United States' Memorial Day.
Abigail Hopper Gibbons, née Abigail Hopper was an American abolitionist, schoolteacher, and social welfare activist. She assisted in founding and led several nationally known societies for social reform during and following the Civil War.
The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a private relief agency created by federal legislation on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army during the American Civil War. It operated across the North, raised an estimated $25 million in Civil War era revenue and in-kind contributions to support the cause, and enlisted thousands of volunteers. The president was Henry Whitney Bellows, and Frederick Law Olmsted acted as executive secretary. It was modeled on the British Sanitary Commission, set up during the Crimean War (1853-1856), and from the British parliamentary report published after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Bridget Divers or Michigan Bridget was an Irish immigrant who rode with the First Michigan Cavalry during the American Civil War. Variations of her surname include Diver, Divers, Deaver, Deavers, Devens, Devins and Devan; and she was known as "Irish Biddy" to Sheridan's men. Unfortunately, none of the accounts of her combat activities come from a verifiable eye-witness. Much of the literature from the middle of the 19th century is written in an idealized and highly stylized form, conforming to the standards of propriety in that era. Nonetheless, careful analysis of surviving records show Michigan Bridget to have been a real person, after removing the almost mythological language frequently used to describe her exploits.
Lorinda Anna "Annie" Blair Etheridge was a Union nurse and vivandière who served during the American Civil War. She was one of only two women to receive the Kearny Cross. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.
Joanna Painter (Fox) Waddill was a nurse assisting wounded and ill Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. She became celebrated as the "Florence Nightingale of the Confederacy" for her humanitarianism.
Sarah "Annie" Turner Wittenmyer was an American social reformer, relief worker, and writer. She served as the first President of the Women's Christian Temperance Union from 1874 to 1879. The Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home was renamed the Annie Wittenmyer Home in 1949 in her honor.
Mary Martha Reid is Florida's "most famous nurse and Confederate heroine." She is best known for serving as the matron of the Florida Hospital, founded in Richmond, Virginia in 1862 to treat convalescing Confederate soldiers from Florida. Her husband, Robert Raymond Reid, served as the territorial governor of Florida from 1839 to 1841.
Helen L. Gilson was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts. She was a nurse during the Civil War. Also known as Helen L. Gilson Osgood.
This is a timeline of women in warfare in the United States up until the end of World War II. It encompasses the colonial era and indigenous peoples, as well as the entire geographical modern United States, even though some of the areas mentioned were not incorporated into the United States during the time periods that they were mentioned.
Sarah "Sallie" Middleton Robbins Broadhead was a teacher, diarist, and resident of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the Battle of Gettysburg. She was the author of The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania from June 15 to July 15, 1863, which is a primary historical source for what happened during the battle and especially how it impacted the residents of the borough. It has been called the most comprehensive written document on the role of women in the Civil War. Ken Burns quoted entries from the diary in his 1990 documentary series, The Civil War.
Margaret Hamilton was a Union nurse during the American Civil War.
Emma Southwick Brinton was an American Civil War army nurse, traveler, and foreign correspondent.
Elizabeth "Eliza" George, nicknamed "Mother George" by the Union army soldiers under her care, served the final two-and-a-half years of her life as a volunteer nurse in the South during the American Civil War. Initially discouraged from serving because of her age and the harsh conditions of wartime service, the fifty-four-year-old widow left her Fort Wayne, Indiana, home in February 1863 and died in May 1865 of typhoid fever, which she contracted while nursing soldiers and civilians at Wilmington, North Carolina, a month after the end of the war. George was buried with full military honors at Lindenwood Cemetery in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a monument erected near her gravesite pays tribute to her wartime service.
Elizabeth "Eliza" Harris served as a United States Sanitary Commission agent, army nurse, and newspaper correspondent during the American Civil War. She was active in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War until September 1863, when she went to Tennessee for several months before returning to the east. After the war, she was active in national reform causes.
Mary H J Henderson was an administrator with Elsie Inglis's Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in the Balkans in World War I, earning five medals. She founded social work and civic groups led by women, in Dundee, Aberdeen and London and served on charitable bodies including Dundee War Relief Fund, and worked for women's suffrage. She was also a war poet.