But when the time came, about the 1st of June, 1863, for the Association to be put in possession of the buildings and grounds assigned them, Mrs. Pomeroy was too ill to receive the keys, and the Secretary took her place. She was never able to look upon the fruit of her labors. Again, she had exhausted her feeble powers, and she was never more to rally.
A slow fever followed, which at last assumed the form of typhoid. She lingered on, slightly better at times, until the 17th of July, when preparations were completed for removing her to the Geneva Water Cure, and she started upon her last journey. She went by water, and arrived at New York very comfortably, leaving there again on the boat for Albany, on the morning of the 20th. But death overtook her before even this portion of the journey was finished. She died upon the passage, on the afternoon of July 20th, 1863. After her life of usefulness and devotion, her name at last stands high upon the roll of martyr-women, whom this war has made.
MARIA R. MANN.
mong the heroic women who labored most efficiently and courageously during the late civil war for the good of our soldiers, and the poor "contrabands," as the freed people were called, was Miss Maria R. Mann, an educated and refined woman from Massachusetts, a near relative of the first Secretary of the Board of Education of that renowned Commonwealth, who gave his life and all his great powers to the cause of education, and finished his noble career as the President of Antioch College, in Ohio.
Miss Mann, is a native of Massachusetts, and spent the greater portion of her mature life previous to the war, as a teacher. In this, her chosen profession, she attained a high position, and for a number of years taught in the High Schools. As a teacher she was highly esteemed for her varied and accurate knowledge, the care and minuteness with which she imparted instruction to her pupils, the high moral and religious principle which controlled her actions, and made her life an example of truth and goodness to her pupils, and for her enthusiastic interest in the cause of education, of freedom and justice for the slave, and of philanthropy and humanity towards the orphan, the prisoner, the outcast, the oppressed and the poor, to whom her heart went out in kindly sympathies, and in prayer and effort for the improvement of their condition.
During the first year of the rebellion, she left all her pleasant associations in New England, and came out to St. Louis, that she might be nearer to the scene of conflict, and aid in the work of the Western Sanitary Commission, and in nursing the sick and wounded soldiers, with whom the hospitals at St. Louis were crowded that year. On her arrival, she was duly commissioned by Mr. Yeatman, (the agent of Miss Dix for the employment of women nurses), and entered upon her duties in the Fifth Street Hospital.
For several months, she devoted herself to this work with great fidelity and patience, and won the gratitude of many a poor sufferer by her kindness, and the respect of the surgeons, by her good judgment and her blended gentleness and womanly dignity.