![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She and her family actively assisted in the Underground Railroad and strongly believed in abolition. In 1862 – the year she volunteered as a nurse – Louisa May Alcott was thirty years of age. She would never marry, and, by the standards of that era, was already considered an “old maid.” Louisa spent much of her youth in Concord, Massachusetts, where she and her family associated with some of the famous “thinkers” of the early 19th Century Transcendentalist and Universalist movements. Let’s learn a little more about this remarkable writer and nurse and her role during the American Civil War. Let’s try again – Who volunteered as a nurse at a Union hospital in Washington D.C., worked hard and cheerfully, but became deathly ill and had to go home…and later wrote about her experiences in Hospital Sketches? Wait, I wasn’t finished with the question! (Don’t be so impatient, now.) Who volunteered as a nurse at a Union hospital in Washington D.C. Who wrote the classic novel Little Women? If you said “Louisa May Alcott” – you’re correct! (This article was shared from in its original format and with full permission from the author.) You might notice some similarities between this real hospital nurse and the fictional character – Mary Phinney – in Mercy Street. and volunteered as a nurse in a Union hospital. We hope you enjoy this blog about a real woman who travelled to Washington D.C. With the new PBS series Mercy Streetstarting last weekend, there is a new heightened interest in Civil War medicine and nurses. ![]()
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