Born: July 19, 1817,
Knox County, Ohio
Died: November 8, 1901,
Bunker Hill, Kansas
He cried out, "Mother! Mother! I knew you'd come!"
--From Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse, p. 110
Known as Mother Bickerdyke and the Cyclone in Calico, Civil War nurse Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke tended soldiers with Ulysses S. Grant's forces.
Highlights
After she was widowed, Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke supported herself and her two sons by working as a practical nurse in Galesburg, Illinois.
During the American Civil War, she oversaw the distribution of supplies to Union army hospitals and moved to Cairo, Illinois, to treat wounded soldiers.
She served as chief of nursing, hospital, and welfare services for Union general Ulysses S. Grant's western armies and set up three hundred field hospitals.
Learn about women's roles during the American Civil War. Available from A&E/History Channel: Civil War Journal: Women at War.
She worked directly in the field, checking that all wounded soldiers had been rescued, even going out at night with her lantern to search the battlefield.
After the war, she helped veterans obtain pensions.
A hospital ship named in her honor, the SS Mary A. Bickerdyke, was launched in Richmond, California, in 1943.
Mother Bickerdyke: Cyclone in Calico
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