Since I got back to campus my work has taken a new direction. I have the bulk of my research done, so now it’s time to sit down and actually write a coherent paper. I sat down with my adviser and we hashed out a schedule that will have my rough draft done just in time for…
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Oct
04
Early October Update
Sep
04
Forging Onwards
August was a very slapdash month for research. I visited several repositories in and around Boston, and wrote to several more out-of-state. I also made use of Google books. As un-scholarly as that sounds, Google books has an extensive collection of books that are past copyright–including convention reports for the Woman’s Relief Corps. The earliest…
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Jul
31
Drowning in Paper
I’ve finished up my research in D.C. and am in the midst of…well, it sometimes feels like chaos. I’m going through each individual pension record and plugging information into a database: year applied, if the application was accepted, where the women served, if there’s any evidence of networking with other former nurses, etc. I’ve done…
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Jun
20
Madness in D.C.
And you ask: how is this new? In all honestly, it’s been a rather quiet few weeks. I moved into George Washington housing in early June, and have been spending my time at the Archives ever since. I’ve been keeping a daily blog if you’d like to see my findings: http://for-a-woman.blogspot.com/ But for those of you…
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May
11
“For A Woman”
Ann Stokes was a very unusual woman. Originally labelled, “contraband,” she enlisted as a nurse on the USS Red Rover on January 1, 1863, and served for almost two years. Thirty years later, Stokes applied for a pension. The request was so unusual that someone scrawled “For A Woman” across her file. It was also…
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