The faces of compassion: Exhibit remembers the nurses of the Civil War

Carnegie was so moved that on April 26, 1898 he gifted the town with an initial grant of $200,000 for the construction of a library and attached music hall, lecture hall and gymnasium and even additional funds to start an endowment fund. Construction started in 1899 and was completed in less than two years. The facility opened to public in May 1901 and can now be found on the National Register of Historic Places as well on the lists of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks.

The traveling exhibit “Faces of Civil War Nurses” set an attendance record for the library’s long–running Second Saturday Civil War Series, which began in 2014. The success of the opening affirms the exhibit’s mission: to honor the caregivers of the Civil War and to share their stories with communities across the country. The large portraits of women who served as nurses during the Civil War bring the viewers face-to-face with the caregivers who tended to the wounded and dying in hospitals, camps and on the battlefield. The women who served as volunteer nurses during the war often endured long hours and multiple tours of duty across front-line battlefields and at numerous hospitals and communities across the country and from both sides of the conflict. 

The exhibit recounts how at the onset of the Civil War women were forbidden to go into “indelicate” medical settings, with the 20 examples showing how women quickly broke down social conventions in caring for the sick and wounded. They would come to provide invaluable aid, from changing bandages and cooking food to comforting the sick and dying. 

Marie Tepe, known as “French Mary”, served with the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry. Born in France, she followed her husband, Bernhard Tepe, into the Union Army with the 27th Pennsylvania in 1861. After a falling out with Bernhard, she struck out on her own with the 114th, cooking, selling supplies and tending the wounded. At Fredericksburg in 1862, she famously refused to fall back and was reportedly wounded in the ankle. After the battle of Chancellorsville, she received the Kearny Cross of gallantry. She arrived with the 114th on July 1, 1863 and likely served near Rock Creek at field hospitals overwhelmed with casualties. After the war, she ran a tavern, remarried and later fell into poverty. She died by suicide in 1901 at age 66.

Belle Reynolds was on duty as panic gripped Pittsburg Landing on April 6,1862. Union troops fled in disarray from Confederate attacks, but Reynolds stood guard with revolver in hand on the ship Emerald, protecting wounded soldiers unable to fend for themselves. Born Arabella Macomber in Massachusetts, Reynolds followed her husband, Lt. William Reynolds of the 17th Illinois Infantry, into war. She would nurse wounded soldiers during the regiment’s first battle, an October 1861 Federal victory at Fredericktown that secured southeastern Missouri for the Union.  She treated casualties during the 17th Illinois campaigns, and while at Shiloh she treated casualties nonstop until exhaustion overcame her. She often assisted with amputations that would haunt her in later years. For her courage, Illinois Governor Richard Yates awarded her the honorary rank of major, having her become “Mrs. Major Reynolds”. She later become a doctor and served with the Red Cross in the Philippines. She died in 1937 at age 96.

Harriet Tubman was certainly the most well-known name among the women featured in the exhibit. Tubman was born Araminta Ross into slavery in Maryland to Harriet “Rit” Greene and Benjamin Ross in about 1822. She would marry her first husband, John Tubman in 1844 and shortly after changed her first name to Harriet to honor her mother. Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and began the perilous pursuit of venturing into slave states to free those held in bondage. When the Civil War began, Tubman made her way to Port Royal, S.C., where the U.S. Army gained an early foothold. Tubman became an able nurse, spy, scout and a guide to more than 700 enslaved people in the military raid on the Combahee River. She was also credited with recruiting Black men to serve in the Union Army. After the war, she continued the cause of freedom and civil rights until her death in 1913 at the age of 91.

 Following the First Battle of Manassas in July 1861, Sally Louisa Thompson, 27, transformed the home of a noted Judge John Robertson to care for a large number of wounded in the Confederate capital. The hospital evolved into one of the biggest in the South. When hospitals had to be under military command, President Jefferson Davis commissioned Thompson as an army captain. “Captain Sally” would be remembered as the South’s Florence Nightingale. Even after the evacuation of Richmond in April, 1865, the U.S. Army’s medical director permitted Thompson to keep her hospital open for two more months. She died in 1916 at age 82. 

Helen Gilson, of Chelsea, Mass., began the Civil War as a governess in the home of the Chelsea Mayor Frank Fay. At a young age she became deeply moved by the suffering of the soldiers and longed to become a nurse. Initially, she was rejected by Dorothea L. Dix, who had been appointed as the Union’s Superintendent of the Army Nurses in June 1861. With Dix’s help, Gilson joined the U.S. Sanitary Commission and quickly proved herself. She would go on to serve at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and finally City Point, Va., where in June 1864 thousands of sick and wounded poured in, including Black soldiers of the U.S. Colored Troops. While some nurses refused to help in the segregated tent hospital, Gilson stepped forward to bring order and compassion wherever she went. She earned the lifelong gratitude of many. It was said that there was not a man in any regiment who would not lay down his life for Miss Gilson, earning her the name “Sweet Helen”. Sadly, she died in 1868 at age 32 during childbirth.

Many nurses of the Civil War worked in stressful field hospital environments that were filthy, crowded, and sometimes dangerous. In early January of 1865, nurse Rose Billings was gravely ill with typhus at the Naval School Hospital in Annapolis, Md., where she had tirelessly cared for Union soldiers. Despite her frail health, she had joined the nursing corps early in the Civil War. She worked under the auspices of Dorothea Dix and the Sanitary Commission, serving in Washington, Falls Church, Fredericksburg and Annapolis. Billings was compassionate nurse who often revived patients others had given up for dead, but ultimately the strain broke her. On Jan. 14, 1865, at age 32, she succumbed to typhus. When fellow nurse Walt Whitman heard of her passing, he honored her as a martyr. She was buried among soldiers and received a military funeral. 

Sister Mary Ignatius Farley was born to Irish immigrants in Virginia. She joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in Wheeling, W.V. in 1863 at the age of 21. Originally, she served in the local Wheeling Hospital, which became a military hospital in 1864. It soon became a bustling post for both Union and Confederate soldiers from Virginia military operations, including the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. One night in 1964, Sister Ignatius discovered her fellow nuns sleeping on the sacristy floor so the newly arrived wounded soldiers could have the comfort of their beds. It was a testament to their selfless dedication. She continued her work throughout the Civil War and was honored with a bronze medal from the Grand Army of the Republic. She passed away in 1931, at the age of 89, one of the war’s last surviving caregivers. 

In May of 1862, while nursing wounded soldiers in her care, Rebecca Rosignol Holliday Pomroy was invited by President and Mary Lincoln to come to Washington after the death of their son Willie. She was selected by Union chief nurse Dorothea Dix to help comfort the grieving family. She earned respect for her firm resolve and gentle care, preferring her hospital ward over promotion or praise. Though she declined to live with the Lincolns full time, she remained close to the family and while on furlough would visit the White House. She even tended to Mary Lincoln after a carriage accident and became a trusted confidant to the president. Pomroy died in 1884 at age 66.

It is estimated that 40,000 woman from both sides of the conflict transformed nursing from a male dominated field into a female led profession during the Civil War. They provided essential care far beyond bandaging and tending to wounds. They cooked, cleaned, wrote letters for patients and offered comfort in countless ways to soldiers who had been on the battlefied.

Often called the “Carnegie Carnegie”, the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall and has been a beacon on the hill since 1901. While Carnegie funded more than 2,500 libraries around the world, the industrialist–turned–philanthropist only endowed five libraries. The list included his first library in the world in Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew’s birth place. The final four included Braddock, Pa (the first in the United States), Homestead, Duquesne, and Carnegie — all near Pittsburgh. 

Of special note for Civil War enthusiasts, the Andrew Free Carnegie Library is home to one of the last remaining Grand Army of the Republic Posts in the country. The Capt. Thomas Espy Post No. 153 was chartered in 1879 and moved into the library in 1906. When the last Civil War veteran member died in 1938, the room was locked and left undisturbed for 50 years as a virtual time capsule. It was meticulously restored in 2010 and is open for tours on Saturdays between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

Weekday appointments can be made by contacting Jon-Erik Gilot at gilotj@einetwork.net. The “Faces of Civil War Nurses” exhibit has now moved to its second U.S. stop outside of Washington, D.C. at the Clarksburg History Museum and Harrison County Historical Society in Clarksburg, W.V. The exhibition is scheduled to remain there through Aug. 20, 2026. 

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