Another Iowa woman who devoted herself to the service was Miss Melcenia Elliott. She served in the hospitals in Tennessee, and afterward in St. Louis had charge of the Home for Refugees. Here she established a school, and instituted many reforms in the direction of cleanliness and industry. It is related that in Memphis, when she was refused admission to one of the hospitals where a neighbor's son was ill, she every night scaled a high fence in the rear of the building and managed to get into the ward where she could attend to the poor boy until he died.
Miss Clara Davis, of Massachusetts, was one of the earliest volunteers, and she was so assiduous in her labors and so cheerful in her manners in the hospital that the soldiers came to look upon her with most profound admiration and affection. One of them was heard to say, "There must be wings hidden beneath her cloak." Her labors were mainly with the Army of the Potomac, and she continued them until an attack of typhoid fever made further work of the kind impossible.
Mrs. R. H. Spencer, of Oswego, N. Y., whose husband enlisted in the One Hundred and Forty-seventh New York regiment, followed that organization to the front, and made herself useful as a nurse and hospital attendant. On the march toward Gettysburg she rode a horse which carried, besides herself, bedding, cooking utensils, clothing, and more than three hundred pounds of supplies for the sick and wounded. While that great battle was in progress, Mrs. Spencer, a part of the time actually under fire, established a field hospital in which sixty wounded men were treated. One day she discovered a townsman of her own who had been shot through the throat, and whose case was pronounced hopeless by the surgeon, as he could swallow nothing. Mrs. Spencer took him in hand, and asked him if he could do without food for a week. The man, who was young and strong, gave signs that he could. "Then," said she, "do as I tell you, and you shall not die." She procured a basin of pure cold water, and directed him to keep the wound continually wet, which he did, until in a few days the inflammation subsided and the edges of the wound could be closed up. After which she began to feed him carefully with broth, and every day brought further improvement until he entirely recovered. When the ammunition barge exploded at City Point a piece of shell struck her in the side, but inflicted only a heavy bruise.
Mrs. Harriet Foote Hawley, wife of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley, of Connecticut, did much work in the hospitals on the Carolina coast, whither she had gone in the first instance to engage in teaching the freedmen. At Wilmington, where typhoid fever broke out, she remained at her post when many others were frightened away. In the last month of the war she was injured on the head by the overturning of an ambulance, and this rendered her an invalid for a long time.
Miss Jessie Home, a native of Scotland, entered the service as a hospital nurse at Washington and continued there for two years, making many friends and doing a vast amount of good, until, from overwork, she was struck down by disease.
Mrs. Sarah P. Edson entered the service during the first year of the war, and was assigned to the general hospital at Winchester, Va. In the spring of 1862 she was with McClellan's army on the Peninsula, and after the battle of Williamsburg, learning that her son was among the wounded, she walked twelve miles to find him, apparently dying, where, with other wounded men, he was greatly in need of care. She worked night and day to alleviate their sufferings, and brought something like cleanliness and order out of the dreadful condition in which she found them. In the ensuing summer she passed through a long and severe illness in consequence of her labors. On her recovery she formed a plan for the training of nurses, and, after her experiment had been tried, an official of the medical department declared "that it was more than a success, it was a triumph."
Miss Maria M. C. Hall, of Washington, was associated with Mrs. Fales in hospital work, and went through the four years of it with unfailing energy and enthusiasm. She finally became general superintendent of the Naval Academy Hospital at Annapolis. After the war she wrote: "I mark my hospital days as my best ones, and thank God for the way in which He led me into the good work, and for the strength which kept me through it all."
Mrs. A. H. Gibbons was a daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, the famous Quaker philanthropist, and wife of James Sloane Gibbons, who wrote the famous song, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more." With her eldest daughter (afterward Mrs. Emerson) she went to Washington in the autumn of 1861, and entered upon hospital service. One day they discovered a small hospital near Falls Church, where about forty men were ill of typhoid fever, and one young soldier, who seemed to be at the point of death, appealed to them, saying: "Come and take care of me, and I shall get well; if you do not come, I shall die." Finding that the hospital was in a wretched condition, they got leave to take it in charge, and presently had it in excellent order, with a large number of the patients recovering. These ladies were on duty at Point Lookout for over a year, and there they were obliged to oppose and evade the officers in various ways, in order to assist the escaped slaves, whom these officers were only too ready and anxious to return to slavery. While they were engaged in this work, their home in New York was sacked by the mob in the draft riots.
Mrs. Jerusha R. Small, of Cascade, Iowa, followed her husband, who enlisted at the beginning of the war, and became a nurse in the regimental hospitals. At the battle of Shiloh, the tent in which she was caring for a number of wounded men, among whom was her husband, was struck by shells from the enemy's guns, and she was obliged to get her patients away as fast as she could to an extemporized hospital beyond the range of fire. After the most arduous service, extending over several weeks with no intermission, she was struck down by disease and died. To one who said to her in her last hours, "You did wrong to expose yourself so," she answered, "No, I feel that I have done right. I think I have been the means of saving some lives, and that of my dear husband among the rest; and these I consider of far more value than mine, for now they can go and help our country in its hour of need." She was buried with military honors.
Another lady who accompanied her husband to the field was the wife of Hermann Canfield, colonel of the Seventy-first Ohio regiment, who was killed in the battle of Shiloh. After taking his body to their home, she returned to the army and continued her hospital service until the close of the war.