Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity in Missouri During the Civil War
No one would look at a Daughter of Charity and see the steel in their personalities that gave them the ability to venture where women rarely went in the 1860’s. They ran schools, among which was St. Philomena’s School in St. Louis. They ran DePaul Hospital in St. Louis, which began as the St. Louis Mullanphy Hospital in 1828. The latter was frowned on. Nursing wasn’t considered a suitable profession for women. Nursing in public hospitals was often done by other residents of the hospital or the poor. No formal training program existed. That way of thinking began changing in the 1850’s, though. The French Daughters of Charity had served as battlefield nurses caring for French soldiers during the Crimean War. Their service had been so exemplary that many people began looking at the American Daughters of Charity and wondering Read more…
"Battlefield Angels" Review
The Citizen’s Companion and the Camp Chase Gazette recently reviewed my book, Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses. The book is a non-fiction recounting of the rarely recognized work of 300 Daughters of Charity during the Civil War. These Catholic sisters provided care on battlefields like Antietam and Gettysburg, on troop transports on the James River, in POW prisons like Point Lookout in Maryland and in hospitals like Satterlee in Philadelphia. They earned the nickname of “Battlefield Angels” because their wide, white cornettes looked somewhat like angel’s wings. They could be found in just about every state involved in the war. The Citizen’s Companion noted, “The stories are told in a compelling narrative, though the story tends to jump around because it is told chronologically. … Battlefield Angels is a non-fiction history book that reads Read more…
Why the Daughters of Charity don’t wear white cornettes any longer
I had my first book signing for Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses yesterday and I was told something I hadn’t heard before. Maybe someone who is reading this can give me more detail. The Daughters of Charity in America wore the wide, white cornettes that they became known for 114 years from 1850 to 1964. At that time, they switched to simpler head covering somewhat similar to what they had worn when they were Sisters of Charity in the early 1800’s. I was told that the reason for the switch was that three sisters were killed in an automobile accident because the cornettes obstructed their peripheral vision and they didn’t see an oncoming car. So does anyone know anything more about this?
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