Thursday, August 5, 2010
Henrietta Ingersoll, hospital worker and reformer
Armory Square Hospital, shown on the left, was where several Maine women served as nurses. Among them was Mrs. Henrietta Ingersoll, a widow from Bangor, Maine. Her husband, an attorney who had just been appointed Maine Attorney General in 1860, died before taking office, leaving Henrietta to fend for herself . When the war broke out, she was just one of many women that volunteered to do their part and she moved to Washington with her children. Well educated and well-connected, she soon found herself an important part of the work at one of the first of the modern Civil War hospitals and one that would serve as a model to subsequent hospitals set up during the war. Set up on the mall in the center of Washington, D.C, it was often visited by dignitaries including President Lincoln. She defended the work of the good doctors, championed women's rights and, in addition to her hospital duties, became the publisher of The Hospital Gazette printed at the Armory Square Hospital in 1864.
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