All who worked with her were her friends, and she has the fullest appreciation of their best qualities, and their earnest efforts. Among those she names thus feelingly, are Mrs. Plummer, the matron of the Fifth Street Hospital, St. Louis, Miss Addie E. Johnson, Mrs. Gibson, and others, her fellow-workers there.
Early in 1864, quite worn out with her protracted labors, Mrs. Colfax returned to her home in Michigan City, where she still resides, honored, beloved and respected, as her character and services demand.
MISS CLARA DAVIS.
his lady, now the wife of the Rev. Edward Abbott, of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, was one of the earliest, most indefatigable and useful of the laborers for Union soldiers during the war. Her labors commenced early in the winter of 1861-62, in the hospitals of Philadelphia, in which city she was then residing.
Her visits were at first confined to the Broad and Cherry Street Hospital, and her purpose at first was to minister entirely to the religious wants of the sick, wounded and dying soldiers. Her interest in the inmates of that institution was never permitted to die out.
It was not patriotism,—for Miss Davis was not a native of this country—but rather a profound sympathy with the cause in which they were engaged which led her, in company with the late Rev. Dr. Vaughan of Philadelphia (of whose family she was an inmate) to visit this place and aid him in his philanthropic and official duties. The necessity of the case led her to labor regularly and assiduously to supply the lack of many comforts which was felt here, and the need of woman's nursing and comforting ways. By the month of May, ensuing, she was giving up her whole time to these ministrations, and this at a considerable sacrifice, and extending her efforts so as to alleviate the temporal condition of the sufferers, as well as to minister to their spiritual ones.
In the early part of this summer, memorable as the season of the Peninsula Campaign, she, in company with Mrs. M. M. Husband, of Philadelphia, entered upon the transport service on the James and Potomac Rivers, principally on board the steamer "John Brooks"—passing to and fro with the sick and wounded between Harrison's Landing, Fortress Monroe and Philadelphia. This joint campaign ended with a sojourn of two months at Mile Creek Hospital, Fortress Monroe.