Adeliza Perry

Adeliza Perry (January 27, 1822 – March 13, 1901) was a teacher and writer from Massachusetts, who served as a nurse in the American Civil War.

Adeliza Perry
Adeliza Perry, from an 1895 publication.
BornJanuary 27, 1822
Hardwick, Massachusetts
DiedMarch 13, 1901
Worcester, Massachusetts
NationalityAmerican
OccupationTeacher, writer
Known forNurse during American Civil War

Early life

Adeliza T. Perry was from Hardwick, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ebenezer Perry and Mercy Atwood Perry. Her father was a carpenter and a schoolteacher, who also served in town government.[1] She taught in public schools in Worcester, Massachusetts.[2][3] She and two other teachers attended a national women's rights convention when it met in Worcester in 1850.[4][5] In 1851, she published a book for young readers, The Cinderella Frock. She was still teaching school during the early part of the American Civil War.[6]

Wartime service

Perry served in the Union Army's Corps of Nurses under Dorothea Dix from April 15, 1863 to July 3, 1865, stationed at Fort Schuyler in New York, and at Balfour Hospital in Virginia.[7] In addition to her direct nursing work, she wrote letters home to families, telling of a soldier's death.[8] She wrote her reminiscences of her war work for Mary A. Gardner Holland's Our Army Nurses (Boston, 1897), including an incident when she distributed to the patients "some delicious home-made wine, which had been sent me from Massachusetts".[7]

She contracted malaria during her work at the hospital, and its lasting effects meant that she could not work after the war. Her congressman, William W. Rice, recommended that she receive a federal pension for her service. She was granted a pension of $12 per month by an act of Congress, in 1887.[2]

After the war

Adeliza Perry donated two eighteenth-century items to the American Antiquarian Society in 1866.[9] She returned to educational work; she taught school in Worcester from 1867,[10] and through the 1870s.[11][12] She published two more books after the war,[13] A Windfall (1880)[14] and The Schoolmaster's Trial (1881).[15]

She died in 1901, aged 79 years, in Worcester.[16] She was one of the four army nurses memorialized in a 1901 ceremony held by the Massachusetts Army Nurses Association in Boston, where Rev. Wilbur N. Mason eulogized, "Who can measure the influence of lives like these? Though of a younger generation, whose knowledge of the great rebellion is only from books, I count it a high and rare privilege to pay my halting tribute to those noble servants, whose lives were pure, ungrudging service of loyalty to their country and flag, and most of all to their great captain, Christ."[17]

References
  1. Paige, Lucius Robinson (1883). History of Hardwick, Massachusetts: With a Genealogical Register. Houghton, Mifflin. pp. 453.
  2. United States Congressional Serial Set. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1887. p. 1829.
  3. Worcester (Mass.) (1856). City document no. ... : annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, ... Worcester Public Library. The City. pp. 78.
  4. Lewis, Jone Johnson (March 17, 2018). "About Those National Woman's Rights Conventions 1850 - 1869". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  5. Lawes, Carolyn J. (2015-01-13). Women and Reform in a New England Community, 1815-1860. University Press of Kentucky. p. 166. ISBN 9780813148182.
  6. Worcester (Mass.) (1862). City document no. ... : annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, ... Worcester Public Library. The City. pp. 99, 228.
  7. Holland, Mary Gardner (1897). Our army nurses : interesting sketches and photographs of over one hundred of the noble women who served in hospitals and on battlefields during our late Civil War, 1861-65. Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. Boston : Lounsbery, Nichols & Worth. pp. 412–416.
  8. "Sergeant C. W. Bishop". Vermont Record. September 16, 1864. p. 4. Retrieved August 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. American Antiquarian Society. 1866. p. 113.
  10. Worcester (Mass.) (1867). City document no. ... : annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, ... Worcester Public Library. The City. pp. 51.
  11. Worcester (Mass.) (1872). City document no. ... : annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, ... Worcester Public Library. The City. pp. 85.
  12. Worcester (Mass.) (1879). City document no. ... : annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, ... Worcester Public Library. The City. pp. 158, 212.
  13. History of Penobscot County, Maine: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches. Williams, Chase & Company. 1882. pp. 238.
  14. Perry, A. T. (1880). A Windfall. Authors' Publishing Company.
  15. Perry, A. (1881). The Schoolmaster's Trial; Or, Old School and New. C. Scribner's Sons.
  16. Convention, National Woman's Relief Corps (U S. ) (1902). Journal of the ... Convention of the National Woman's Relief Corps. National Tribune Company. p. 211.
  17. "In Memory of Army Nurses". The Boston Globe. April 5, 1901. p. 3. Retrieved August 30, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
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