Mary Ann Bickerdyke
1817 – 1901
Born on July 19, 1817, in Knox county,
Ohio,
Mary Ann Ball grew up in the houses of various
relatives. She attended
Oberlin College and later studied nursing. In 1847
she married a widower, Robert Bickerdyke, who died
in 1859.
Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War she
volunteered to accompany and distribute a collection
of supplies taken up for the relief of wounded
soldiers at a makeshift army hospital in
Cairo,
Illinois.
On her arrival there she found conditions to be
extremely unsanitary, and she set to work
immediately at cleaning, cooking, and nursing. She
became matron when a general hospital was organized
there in November 1861.
Having scavenged supplies and equipment and
established mobile laundries and kitchens,
Bickerdyke had generally endeared herself to the
wounded and sick, among whom she became known as
"Mother" Bickerdyke. To incompetent officers and
physicians she was brutal, succeeding in having
several dismissed, and she retained her position
largely through the influence of Grant, Sherman, and
others who recognized the value of her services.
In 1876 she removed to
San Francisco,
where she secured through Senator John A. Logan,
another wartime patron, a position at the U.S. Mint.
She also devoted considerable time to the Salvation
Army and similar organizations. She worked
tirelessly on behalf of veterans, making numerous
trips to Washington to press pension claims, and was
herself granted a pension of $25 a month by Congress
in 1886.
She returned to Kansas in 1887 and died in Bunker
Hill, Kansas, on November 8, 1901.
