| MISS MARY J. SAFFORD. |
When the Rev. Shepard Wells and his wife were driven from East Tennessee because of their loyalty to the government, they went to St. Louis, where he engaged in the work of the Christian Commission, and she entered the hospital and became superintendent of a special diet kitchen, which did an immense amount of work for the cause.
Mrs. E. C. Witherell, of Louisville, Ky., was another of those who devoted themselves to the merciful and patriotic work in the hospitals at the expense of their lives. She was head nurse on a hospital steamer in the Mississippi until she was stricken down with fever and died in July, 1862. Still another of those was Miss Phebe Allen, a daughter of Iowa, who served in a hospital at St. Louis until she died in the summer of 1864. Mrs. Edwin Greble, mother of Lieut. John T. Greble, who was killed in the battle of Big Bethel, and of another son who died in the army, of fever, devoted herself to hospital service and to preparing garments and blankets for the soldiers.
Mrs. Isabella Fogg, of Maine, was another of those who pushed their way into the service before it was organized, and found some difficulty in so doing. But she got there at last, and took part in the hospital transport service in the waters of Chesapeake Bay. After the battle of Chancellorsville, she was serving in a temporary hospital at United States Ford when it was shelled by the Confederates. Her son was in the Army of the Shenandoah, and was badly wounded in the battle of Cedar Creek. While performing her duties on a Western hospital boat, in charge of the diet kitchen, she fell through a hatchway and received injuries that disabled her for life.
Mrs. E. E. George, of Indiana, when she applied for a place in the service, was refused on the ground that she was too old. But in spite of her advanced years she insisted upon enlisting in the good cause, and in Sherman's campaign of 1864 she had charge of the Fifteenth Army Corps hospital, and in the battles before Atlanta she was several times under fire. The next spring she was on duty at Wilmington, N. C., when eleven thousand prisoners released from Salisbury were brought there in the deplorable condition that was common to those who had been in Carolina in Confederate stockades. Her incessant labors in behalf of those unfortunate men prostrated her, and she died.
Large numbers of the troops raised in the Eastern and Middle States passed through Philadelphia on their way to the seat of war, and some philanthropic ladies of that city established a refreshment saloon where meals were furnished free to soldiers who were either going to the front or going home on furlough or because disabled. Among the most assiduous workers here was Mary B. Wade, widow of a sea captain, who, despite her seventy years, was almost never absent, night or day, through the whole four years.
Another widow who gave herself to the cause was Henrietta L. Colt (née Peckham), a native of Albany County, N. Y., whose husband was a well-known lawyer. She labored in the Western hospitals and on the river hospital steamers, looking especially after the Wisconsin men, as she was for some time a resident of Milwaukee. She wrote in one of her letters: "I have visited seventy-two hospitals, and would find it difficult to choose the most remarkable among the many heroisms I every day witnessed. I was more impressed by the gentleness and refinement that seemed to grow up in the men when suffering from horrible wounds than from anything else. It seemed to me that the sacredness of the cause for which they offered up their lives gave them a heroism almost superhuman."
| MRS. MARIANNE F. STRANAHAN. |
Among the great fairs that were held for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission, that in Brooklyn, N. Y., was one of the most successful. It paid into the treasury of the Commission three hundred thousand dollars and furnished supplies valued at two hundred thousand more. This was the work of the Brooklyn Women's Relief Association, of which Mrs. James S. T. Stranahan was president. Her efforts in this work broke down her health, and she died in the first year after the war.
Miss Hattie A. Dada, of New York, was one of the women who volunteered as nurses immediately after the first battle of Bull Run. From that date she was continually in service till the war closed—her time being about equally divided between the Eastern and Western armies. After General Banks's retreat in the Shenandoah Valley, she and Miss Susan E. Hall, remaining with the wounded, became prisoners to the Confederates and were held about three months. From that time these two ladies were inseparable, their last two years of service being in the scantily furnished hospitals at Murfreesboro, Tenn., one of the most difficult fields for such work.