Mary Jewett Telford (1839-1906)

In honor of Women’s History Month, Civil War historian Vicki Profitt and I are working together to honor Mary Jewett Telford (my great-great-great aunt). My husband,  Evan Marshall, and I attended Vicki’s talk Illuminated History: The Civil War Soldiers of Perinton, which included a profile of Mary Jewett Telford.

Mary Jewett Telford lived the fullest life possible for an aspiring white woman in 19th-century America. She was a Civil War nurse, wife of Jacob Telford, adoptive mother of Civil War orphan girls, post-Civil War veterans’ humanitarian as charter member of the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC), suffragette, magazine editor and writer, and speaker on the national temperance circuit. Her parents, Dr. Lester Jewett and Hannah Southwick Jewett, a Quaker, were progressives who believed in the education and achievements of women. The Jewett family were abolitionists and their farm in Seneca, New York, was the second-to-last stop before Canada on the Underground Railway, according to Mary. 

This month, we are asking you to share a minibio about a female ancestor. We would like to interview you about your female ancestor and share your stories on our blogs.  Please contact us below.

Thank you for honoring the important contributions of women.

Martha Jewett

Vicki Proftt

Memoir opens a window to a different life.

In starting my research for a new family memoir about my great-great-great aunt, Mary Jewett Telford, I learned how flowers were used to commemorate Memorial Day over one-hundred years ago.

I’ve been reading through the “red book” (i.e., rule book) of an organization Mary Jewett Telford founded as a charter member and national corresponding secretary: the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC). The WRC was formed in 1883 to assist the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a huge post-Civil War organization of Union veterans. Before the inception of the federal Veterans Administration, the WRC raised money for veterans relief, through entertainment, services, and membership dues. The Relief Committees of the local WRC “corps” (i.e., local chapters) buried veterans, supported homes for Civil War orphans, visited the sick, and helped satisfy the ”temporal wants” of veterans, widows, and orphans.

How did they use flowers on Memorial Day? They placed them in large bodies of water. In 1903, the Corps decided “That Corps adjacent to large streams or bodies of water strew floral tributes on the waters on Memorial Day in memory of our sailor-soldier dead, providing that it does not seriously conflict with ceremonies of other patriotic organizations” (The Woman’s Relief Corps Red Book Containing the Rules and Reulations of the Woman’s Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, Adopted by Twenty-third National Convention, Denver, Colorado, 1905, Revised Edition, May 1914, page 155).

Mary Jewett Telford (1839-1906) received a Civil War pension for her service as the sole nurse in a Nashville hospital of over 1,000 wounded Union soldiers. She and her husband, Jacob Telford, adopted three girls who were Civil War orphans. She went on to be a church and temperance worker and was active in the Colorado woman’s suffrage movement.