Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1897-12-04
A WAR HEROINE.
Stories Of the Famous Army Nurse, Mother
Bickerdyke.

Not often is WOmanS birthday Gel
ebrated by state organization, but
when the commander of the Grand
Army of the Republic ordered that on
July 10, the department of Kansas
should do honor to Mother Bickerdyke,
now so years of age, it was recognized
as worthy act. There are few women
to whom greater opportunities have
come and none who has met OppOrtu-
nifty better. She is so years old, and
still the heart that beat so lovingly for
the boys in blue is warm for them, and
the veterans are as much her friend as
they were in the days of battle. When
she goes to an encampment of the
state she is the guest of honor. and
when she returns to her quiet home
with her son on the prairieS of the
western part of the state she bears
with her the good wishes of all the
friends of other days. They all call her
mother" and few know that she has
any other name.
Mary A. Bickerdyke has had ro-
mantle history. In her girlhood days
in Ohio she attended Oberlin college.
ana then did hospital work. Later
she was married to Robert Ball, and
to item We're born two children. She
was ( widow when the first call for
troops came and went to the front
from her home in Illinois to nurse the
soldiers. And she did it well, never
laying down the task she had under
taken until the last gun was fired, in
fact not until the last of the Illinois
troops We're mustered out in 1866
Thousands of the soldiers felt her min
istering hand and called her blessed.
She went with the army or stayed in
the hospital, as was needed, and bore
charmed life. Then when it was all
over she said good-by as if to her chill
dren. for all had loved her. None of
the nurses did better Service-but her
life-work had but just begun.
At the grand review down Pennsyl-
vania avenue. Washington. she rode
with the troops dressed in a calico
dress and SunbOnnet, her uniform
throughout the war. The dress and bon
net were sold afterward for 800 as SOU
venirs. Once when in the service she
discharged drunken sergeant; he
appealed to General Sherman, who
replied: Il can do nothing for you.
Mother Bickerdyke outranks me-
tional encampment and said: II know
her well. 1 have seen her helping the
wounded soldiers on the battlefield
when the shot and shell We're raining
around her. Why, gentlemen. the
hands of women are so connected with
the hand of Divinity that man without
them would be a barbarian"
After the boys We're mustered out, and
Thousands hnv n no lxpn hat 70
do. she raised in Chicago $4,000 to take
them to the plains of the West. where
they could find homes. The Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy Railroad Com
pany told her that it would furnish trans
pontatio for all she wished to carry. and
it did. Hundreds of the old soldiers went
with her to the promised land, and on the
claims that they found out where the
horizon was afar off they made homes.
But the task was not completed for the
woman who had taken the boys West
One day the Cheyennes got on the war
path and went roaming over the western
part of the state. 1t was a death-dealing
raid. too, but that was not ALL Thou
sands of dollars worth of hard-earned
property of the settlers was destroyed
1t was raid that made the whole state
afraid. People as far east as Topeka
were ready to leave for the east to escape
the redskins. But when the army had
driven the bucks to their reservation and
the settlers could go back to their ruined
homes something else came up to think
Of Mother Bickerdyke went to Wash
ington and interceded for, her "boys"
again. From the war department she Sc
cured an order for ratiOns for 800 people
for ten months. or until the people could
raise another crop. She met the Presi-
dent ON this occasion, and from him
received praise for her work. The state
also helped both in an appropriation and
from the private purses of the people
who were able ITO assist.
Next was the grasshopper plague. Ev-
eryone remembers the pleas that went up
from the sunflower state and the predic-
tions that there was an end to the devel
opment OF the plains. But the people set
tied there did not think so. They be-
lieved that it was but Il temporary defeat
and that it would not be repeated. They
were right, for in all the tWenty-three
years that have followed there have been
no more visitatiOns of the destruction of
that year, 1874 Mother Bickerdyke was
one of the most earnest helpers in this
time of trouble She went to New York
ITO the needy. 1t was not an easy thing
to do all this but she never thought of
resting, and when the work was accom-
pliShed she was ready to begin again for
her soldier friends.
Twenty years ago, when go years old
she went ITO California and was welcomed
by the soldiers of that state as warmly
as she had been in Kansas, for sine mad
met thousands of them on the fields of the
South and in the hospitals. Here she re-
manned for time resting. and then was
given a position in the mint in San Franz
cisco. She filled this for "a decade, and
then came back to the state of her adop-
| ton. to die among the soldiers she knew
SO well. With her son she has since