Women of Lynchburg's Confederate Hospitals

Women of Lynchburg's Confederate Hospitals. . ”The whole course of our ordinary life was changed. All our usual avocations were at an end, and a new life began for women.” , , Susan Leigh Blackford (1835-1916) , Lynchburg nurse during Civil War, The Civil War, with its overwhelming numbers of sick and wounded, dramatically changed medical care in the United States. As the second-largest permanent hospital center in the Confederacy after Richmond, Lynchburg played an important part in the development of modern hospitals and especially in the new role of women in nursing care., When the Lynchburg Home Guard left the city in April 1861, its members carried a flag made by the ladies of Lynchburg. As the war began in earnest, the ladies' activities assumed a more serious nature. Besides making clothing for the Home Guard, they visited the city's growing number of hospitals, which had traditionally been considered unfit for women. They made bandages, delivered food, and visited with homesick soldiers., Surgeon-in-chief Dr. William Owen initially ordered that "no more women or flies" were to be admitted to local hospitals. Rejecting this decision, Lucy Mina Otey went to Richmond and met with President Jefferson Davis. She received his permission to open an independent hospital in Lynchburg. With Catherine Waller Speed, she opened the Ladies' Relief Hospital at the corner of Main and Sixth Streets in August 1861., Local women quickly proved they could handle nursing duties and hospital management. By 1862, women could be found in every hospital in Lynchburg. They washed and dressed wounds, supervised orderlies, and comforted the dying. Military authorities came to rely on both free and enslaved women for essential nursing, cooking, and laundry services. It was a matter of pride that the worst cases were regularly sent to the Ladies' Relief Hospital, which had one of the highest survival rates of any hospital in Lynchburg., The tireless service of women not only sustained Lynchburg's large medical complex through four years of war, but also foreshadowed modern hospital care in America., (photo caption) , Letter from Lucy Mina Otey to Elizabeth A. Hanna, notifying her of her husband Abraham Hanna's death in the Ladies' Relief Hospital, August 18, 1864. Note Otey's postscript, "I send a lock of his hair enveloped. He was intered at the Soldiers beaurying Ground and the Undertaker can always show his grave.”