Mary Ann Bickerdyke

By: Brian

Mary Ann was born on July 19, 1817 in Knox County, Ohio. She attended Oberlin College and later pursued the field of medicine. She married Robert Bickerdyke in 1847 who later died in 1859. She supported herself and her two children in Galesburg, Illinois and practiced botanical medicine.

One Sunday, the pastor of her church had received a letter from one of the members of the church that had gone off to war. He read this letter to the congregation and one of the members chose Mary Ann to go and help the horrible hospitals the letter had described. Mary Ann took this task unsure of what she was getting into and packed a pair of clothes and a lot of medical supplies and headed off to Cairo, Illinois.

Here, she completely redid all the hospitals in the whole military camp. Eventually, a main hospital was built and she was appointed "head" of it by Ulysses Grant. It was here that she revolutionized an important part of the medical aspects of the war. She decided that instead of burning the old dirty clothes, she would wash them to save the army a lot of money. When she moved with the battle, she only had one washing system, so she wrote back to the church. She received many washing supplies and her system was set up in many hospitals and camps and she even had a traveling version.

She became great friends with General William Tecumseh Sherman and followed the Army of Tennessee everywhere. Finally, he said she wasn't going with him as he captured Savannah. She finally met up with him when he captured it and the men had fallen to shambles. She stayed here helping these men until the end of the war.

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