Remembering Mary Sophia Hill, the Florence Nightingale of the Confederacy
Irish woman Mary Sophia Hill was a Civil War nurse who became a heroine in the eyes of all the troops she treated.
In the U.S. before the Civil War, almost all nursing care was done at home. Caring for your family when they were sick, was looked upon as just part of a woman’s job.
Many of the more than 2000 nurses who served during the Civil War are unsung heroes. Some did leave accounts, such as Louisa May Alcott, the author of "Little Women," who was a nurse at the Union Hotel hospital in Georgetown. Due to no real record keeping and the lack of attention being paid to the many women and some men who served as battlefield angels, their names are mostly forgotten.
One of those was Dublin woman Mary Sophia Hill.
Her activities during the course of the war would see her become a heroine in the eyes of all the troops she treated, who would refer to her as the "Florence Nightingale of the Confederacy."
Born on November 12, 1819, in Dublin, Mary Sophia Hill was the daughter of a physician, who, along with her twin brother Samuel, spent…