Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke

Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke

Born in Knox County, Ohio on  July 19,1817. Her mother died when she was only 18 months old and this resulted in her being shuttled between relatives for most of her young life and because of this she received only the most basic education.  She did attend Oberlin College where she studied nursing. 

In  April 1847 she married Robert Bickerdyke, a widower with three children. They had two sons of their own.  Robert died suddenly in 1860 leaving Mary Ann to support the family.  She began to practice “botanic” medicine which she had studied in Cincinnati before she was married. It was during a church service in 1861 that she heard about the neglect of the Illinois volunteers who had become sick with typhoid and dysentery at a Union Army camp in nearby Cairo.  She organized a relief fund and took it to the camp for disbursement. When she arrived there she horrified to find it was even more squalid than had been described.  It was filthy, crowded, unsanitary, and there was barely any food.  Without waiting for permission from anyone she began cleaning, feeding and nursing the sick men thus beginning her four year career helping the Civil War’s sick and wounded both at the front lines and behind. 

In 1862 she made five trips to the battlefield at Fort Donelson to evacuate the injured to various hospitals It was this experience that convinced her that she was most needed at the front.  She began to follow General Grant’s army as it moved up the Tennessee River toward the Confederate stronghold in Mississippi. During the battles she frequently risked her own life and safety to search for and rescue wounded soldiers. As she worked in field hospitals, tents hidden in the woods, she washed clothes, prepared food, distributed supplies and nursed the wounded. 

She was known and loved by the men as “Mother Bickerdyke” 

She accompanied General Grant to Vicksburg and Sherman to Chattanooga and was the only woman present at the battles of Shiloh, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge where she labored in freezing rain and deep mud to care for the 1,700 wounded Union soldiers. 

Mary Ann was in Beaufort, NC when the war ended. and she followed Sherman’s army into Washington DC where she was given a place of honor in the Victory parade on May 24th 1865. In the years after the war she settled in Salinas KS where she opened a hotel and continued to assist veterans.