Southern & Coastal Maine
44
Bath Nurse Cared For The Gettysburg Wounded by Brian Swartz
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Adapted from Maine at War
rior to the Civil War, Sarah Sampson lived quietly in Bath with her husband, Charles A.L. Sampson. He carved figureheads for wooden boats built in Bath and elsewhere. When Charles joined the 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment as a captain in spring 1861, Sarah tagged along as he took his company upriver to Augusta, where the regiment formed prior to mustering into the U.S. Army. Soon Charles became the 3rd Maine’s lieutenant colonel, and Sarah accompanied him as a nurse as the regiment shipped to Wash-
ington, D.C. Sarah cared for sick and wounded Maine soldiers after First Manassas, during the Peninsula Campaign, and after the December 1861 battle at Fredericksburg. Shortly after the fighting ended at Gettysburg, she headed to that Adams County town with nurse Ruth S. Mayhew, a Rockland widow temporarily living in Portland. Both volunteered as nurses to care for the wounded men — 20,995 according to the official count — created by the battle.
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Sampson and Mayhew represented the Maine Camp Hospital Association, based in Portland. The organization raised funds to keep nurses in the field and to buy and ship supplies to them. Donations — bandages, blankets, and anything else beneficial to hospitalized soldiers — were always welcome, and the MCHA often shipped dry goods to the nurses, too. Potatoes, dry beans, dried apples, and canned foods were particularly welcome. Sampson and Mayhew caught a train
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