An important building in the Jewett family's Civil War experience still stands. It is a church. Thanks to Vic and Dollie Masters, parents of Civil War historian Vicki Profitt, for providing the current photo. And kudos to Clay Feeter, publisher of Standup Journal, for the old photo. Side-by-side they show the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee (on the right) and Hospital No. 8 for wounded Union soldiers (on the left). Same building. Different purpose.

My great-great-great aunt, Mary Jewett Telford (1839-1906) , was the only female nurse caring for the 600 Civil War soldiers in Hospital No. 8 for eight months from 1863-1864. When Mary first applied for a nursing position with the U.S. Sanitary Commission, she was turned down. She told no one of that rejection letter, but "throwing it into the grate made of it a 'whole burnt offering to her righteous wrath.' " With her parents' blessing, she set off from her home in Lima, Michigan, to Nashville, Tennessee.  Eventually she was offered a position as a nurse in Hospital No. 8, after proffering letters of recommendation, including one from Michigan Governor Austin Blair, her father's friend. 

After eight months, exhausted and ill, Mary resigned her commission. She returned home and married Jacob Telford. They became adoptive parents of Civil War orphan girls. She was granted an Army pension. She went on to be a founding member of the Woman’s Relief Corps, a post-Civil War veterans support organization, speaker on the temperance circuit, and activist for woman's suffrage in Colorado. 

Check out Vicki Profitt's profile of Mary on page 4 of the latest issue of Historigram, a publication of the Perinton Historical Society. 

Was the building originally a church before it became Hospital No. 8? Was it re-commissioned as a hospital for Union soldiers during the Civil War? Does anyone know? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

Photo of Mary Jewett Telford

Courtesy of Floris A. Lent

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.