The Irish Florence Nightingale of the South

 

The Irish Florence Nightingale of the South

Mary Sophia Hill, born in Dublin in 1819, is one of the many whose contributions were left in the fog of history.   Fortunately, she left a diary and other records of her story during and after the Civil War years, and it tells a fascinating tale. 

She came to America in 1850 with her brother and settled in New Orleans.   There she began a life as a teacher of Music and English.   Her diary starts just as the war broke out.   Her brother Samuel enlisted and became a private with the 6th Louisiana,  a regiment composed largely of Irishmen.

Some of her first thoughts:

" In my eyes, the only blot I ever saw in the sunny South was slavery; but as a stranger, an alien, I had no right to meddle".

"How well do I remember all the excitement attendant upon the State of Louisiana seceding from the Union!  Ay, as well as if it were to-day; though little dreaming at the time I should have been in any way mixed up in the trouble that followed."

And mixed up in it she was,  deciding to follow her brother's unit as it moved north, and volunteer her services, where she was to experience the First Battle of Bull Run. 

 

As she describes in her diary - "I concluded I would follow him to Virginia to care for him … and that I would, wherever needed, care for the wounded, the sick, and the distressed.”

While her brothers regiment did not see action at Bull Run, Mary saw plenty - in the field hospitals and around the camps.  

Before the battle Mary described one of her first encounters with the troops while she was setting up the hospital. 

"When the exercises had concluded, the officers rode up to the hospital, and asked, had we anything to give them to drink? Major James was spokesman. I promptly answered yes, and handed him a bottle marked Old Cognac, which had been sent up that day with hospital supplies. The gallant Major handed it around, each taking a drink, some more, some less; of course they finished it, and rode off. Next morning when Dr. McKelvy came his rounds to the hospital, I was surprised to see a merry twinkle in the heretofore steady old gentleman's eye when he looked at me, and an explosion of laughter when, upon asking me what I had given the officers to drink the evening before, I said a bottle of brandy which had come with the medical stores. "Why," he replied, "it was cough mixture I sent in a brandy bottle, and you could have seen this in pencil-mark under Old Cognac." The principal ingredient of the mixture was tartar-emetic. Of course all who drank of it were dreadfully sick, and at first the doctor thought they were poisoned, until he heard of the drink at the hospital, when he as well as the officers felt sure it was a practical joke of mine, and were very wroth against me. Some time after I brought some good brandy, and offered it to my friends. All, like gentlemen, partook, to bury the hatchet, except my old friend Captain Monaghan, afterward Colonel, who could not be tempted. "No, Madam, I have taken my first and last drink in a hospital." 

A few days latter the Battle of Bull Run began.  She describes her experience:

 

"21st of June. Battle of Manassas began at half-past seven in the morning. Day very hot. Fighting all day.
  22nd. Sunday. Plenty of prisoners taken and Sherman's whole battery captured; I saw it with my own eyes. Water very scarce; troops suffered awfully for want of it. When Johnston's men came in the morning, at their halt at Manassas, I sent them buckets of water and a bag of crackers, that they might not face their enemy black fasting. Spent day at hospital with Dr. Nott of Mobile, and Dr. Williams. Tied up and staunched the bleeding of many a poor fellow. I remember being asked by some to pick Minie balls out of their legs and arms, while they waited their turn of the doctors, who of course had to attend to the most serious cases first. They have not half supplies. I tore down all the window blinds, and rolled them into bandages; nor was there half hospital accommodations. I made good chicken-soup, and flew around generally. The sights of the wounded were fearful to look at."

She describes more of the incidents surrounding the hospital and caring for the wounded - including one where a sutler (merchant selling goods to soldiers) was selling water at outrageous prices to wounded soldiers.  It led to this observation -  "If I lived a hundred years I would never forget that day, when I saw human nature in all its noblest and all its meanest attributes."

More of this amazing woman's story next month - a trip back to Dublin, and more writings from the battlefields and beyond.