Libby MacCaskill

Describes experiences of two women from Maine who served as nurses during the Civil War, Isabella Morrison Fogg and Sarah Smith Sampson. Fogg was a middle-aged (37) widow with a 19 year old son. She worked as a nurse for the 20th and 6th Maine Regiments. Her son joined the Army, Isabella kept track of him thru letters and a network of friends and tried to ensure that he received safe assignments. But he was wounded anyway and Isabella herself became ill and never recovered her full health, dying in 1873. Her son partially recovered and died at age 37 from consumption, a married man and the Superintendent of the National Cemetery at Ft. Leavenworth. Sarah Sampson was a young wife who followed her husband to war; he was a Captain of Compnay D Third Maine Regiment. Nursed outside of channels and informally because she felt she was allowed to do more as an officer's wife than she would have been allowed to do officially as a nurse. Her husband could not reconcile himself to taking orders he felt resulted in unnecessary deaths and was arrested and forced to resign his commission as a Lt. Col. Although her husband disapproved, Sarah eventually returned to the front as a nurse. After the war she returned to Maine. Her husband died in 1881. She in 1907.… (mer)