Like Hannah Ropes, the three Woolsey women used their prominent social position to obtain prodigious amounts of supplies and other necessities for the wounded. At one point, Georgy personally delivered to the White House a letter she had written to President Lincoln, imploring him to send chaplains to the military hospitals. He promptly named seven new chaplains.

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Georgy was noted for her cool demeanor, in times of emergency. Jane wrote of her: “There was never a critical case in the hospital on which Georgy’s intelligence was not brought to bear in some shape.” Ever alert for ways to make patients more comfortable and their care more efficient, she kept her apron pockets filled with forks, spoons, corkscrews and other useful items. Both sisters carried notebooks in which they re-corded individual patient needs and wishes. Georgy carefully noted the names and addresses of the dying for later use in returning their possessions to their families.

Both Jane and Georgy Woolsey depicted wartime hospital life in sensitive and enduring writings. Jane’s book, Hospital Days, published in 1868, enjoyed wide readership. In it she quotes an unnamed officer’s view of the Civil War nurse: “She may be totally impervious to ideas of order; she may love ‘hugger-mugger’ and hand-to-mouth ways of getting at direct objects; she may hopelessly muddle the ward returns, and interchange sentiment with the most obnoxious of the stewards, but she will cheerfully sacrifice time, ease, and health to the wants or whims of a wounded man.”

After the war, Georgy Woolsey assisted in establishing the Connecticut Training School for Nurses in New Haven. She also wrote a nursing handbook that was only the second of its kind to be published in the United States. Jane and another sister, Abby, played pioneer roles in developing enlightened methods of nursing in civilian hospitals.

Among the church leaders who answered the humanitarian call during the war, none responded with more fervor or professional gifts than Mother Angela (Eliza Maria Gillespie), founder of the Sisters of the Holy Cross. The daughter of a respected Pennsylvania attorney and landowner, she numbered General Sherman, a senator, and an assortment of other leaders among her relatives. When war broke out, she was the director of St. Mary’s Academy at Notre Dame University.

Early in the conflict, when General Grant sent a plea for nurses to Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton, Mother Angela left immediately with a group of sisters. Grant later described her to Sherman as “a woman of rare charm of manner, unusual ability, and exceptional executive talents.”

The sisters were first sent to Paducah, Ky., where the surgeons initially received them coolly. The doctors, however, soon came to appreciate both the useful services the women were performing and the military precision with which Mother Angela organized them.

The demoralizing hospital diet of rancid pork and stale bread was quickly replaced by rice, eggs, milk and chicken that Mother Angela procured and prepared herself. At one point, she had 60 nuns helping her care for 1,400 men at Mound City, which was regarded as the best military hospital in the country at the time.

Mother Angela employed her family connections and social skills to obtain supplies where even high-ranking military officers failed. William H. Osborn, president of the Illinois Central Railroad, gave her food, wine and free passes for wounded men who were being sent home. Asked by Secretary of War Cameron to take charge of a hospital at Cairo, she charmed representatives of various commissions and aid societies into backing her efforts. On one occasion, she entertained a weary visitor with tea brewed on her single, makeshift burner and served in a tin cup. Upon returning home, he sent her a six-burner stove and other supplies on the next train.

True to her faith, Mother Angela served Union and Confederate soldiers with equal devotion. Once, a seriously wounded Confederate officer was brought to Mound City. When word got around, an angry mob stormed the hospital, determined to drag the officer out and execute him. But Mother Angela stood over his bed and refused to leave until the Confederate had been guaranteed safe passage home. In September 1862, Mother Angela returned to St. Mary’s Academy, assured that the soldiers’ needs would be met from other sources.

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