Skowhegan’s Hannah Judkins Starbird An angel of mercy

Skowhegan’s Hannah Judkins Starbird

by James Nalley

Prior to the U.S. Civil War, many nurses in the United States were male since social taboos prevented females (especially “well-todo” ones) from working outside of the home. However, after the outbreak of the war, the Union Army leadership quickly realized that they required more medical staff to tend the injured on the battlefield. Thus, it decided to accept female nurses to fill the gap. According to the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War, “More than 3,000 middle-class white women served as paid or volunteer nurses during the war, working under Dorothea Dix, the Superintendent of Army Nurses. Many of them had no prior medical training and they learned on-the-job through hard experience, while being exposed to the dangers of the battlefield.” One such nurse was from Skowhegan, who provided detailed accounts of her experiences at a hospital in Maryland.

Hannah Judkins was born on August 10, 1832, in Skowhegan. She was the daughter of Levi Judkins and Hannah Emery Judkins, and the granddaughter of John Emery, who fought in two prominent Revolutionary War battles: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston. Judkins served for approximately nine years as a schoolteacher, with plans to continue teaching as a lifelong career. However, this changed when she decided to enlist, with no pri-

An angel of mercy

Hannah Judkins Starbird ca. 1895

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or medical training, as an army nurse in August 1864. As stated by Judkins in the book Our Army Nurses: Interesting Sketches and Photographs of Nearly 100 Noble Women Who Served in Hospitals and on the Battlefields during the Civil War by Mary Gardner Holland, “I reported to Miss Dix at her house in Washington, D.C., and was immediately sent to Carver Hospital, where I ministered to the wounded and afflicted soldiers.” Apparently, Judkins had passed Dix’s strict guidelines for nurse candidates. Under such guidelines, volunteers were to be between the ages of 35 and 50 and “plain-looking.” Moreover, they were required to wear unhooped black or brown dresses, with no jewelry or cosmetics. In this regard, Dix wanted to avoid sending attractive young females into the hospitals, where she believed that they would be exploited by the male doctors and patients.

Meanwhile, as the country’s bloodiest war raged on, army nurses were pushed to their limits. In fact, for every three soldiers killed in battle, five more died from non-combat-related diseases. In addition, according to American Battlefield Trust, “The primitive nature of Civil War medicine, both in its intellectual underpinnings and in its practice in the armies, meant that many wounds and illnesses were unnecessarily fatal…Meanwhile, soldiers suffering from what we now recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder were uncatalogued and uncared for.” Thus, in addition to providing basic medical care, army nurses simply comforted, fed, wrote letters, read, and prayed with the patients.

Judkins served at Carver Hospital in Washington D.C. for only three weeks, after which she was transferred to St. John’s College Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland. During her service, she witnessed the horrors of war from another perspective: the treatment of former prisoners of war. As she stated in Holland’s book, “The hospital accommodated about 1,200 patients and included 14 nurses. It was a post for paroled prisoners. Pen cannot describe the first boat-load of half-starved, half-clothed, thin, emaciated forms whose feet, tied up in rags, left footprints of blood as they marched along to be washed and dressed for the wards.” She continued, “In many cases, their minds were demented, and they could give no information as to friends or homes and died in such conditions. Their graves were marked as ‘Unknown.’” As she cared for the sick and dying soldiers, she heard stories of their suffering in prison, “all of which corroborated with what I have seen in print, only one-half cannot be told!” This experience left a lasting impression on Judkins who later wrote the following: “The patience, bravery, and fortitude of our soldiers will ever be cherished in my memory.” It is important to note that, despite their determination, knowledge, and emotional and physical strength, female nurses were generally unpaid for their services. According to Curator Sue (cont. on page 44)

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(cont. from page 43) Ann Gaitings of the Bangor Historical Society, “Some of the nurses felt that money demeaned their patriotism and Christian sense of duty.”

Judkins subsequently married Solomon Starbird, who worked as a lawyer in New York and served in the war as a 1st lieutenant in the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, an African American regiment, and the sister regiment of the renowned Massachusetts 54th Volunteers (depicted in the 1989 Academy Award-winning film “Glory”). The couple moved to Nebraska and then to Colorado, where Solomon continued his work as a lawyer.

After Solomon’s death in 1889, Judkins moved further west and became an active member of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War, which was a social organization established by Dorothea Dix in 1881 that advocated for and helped secure recognition and benefits for former Civil War nurses. In 1910 and 1913, Judkins served as junior vice-president of the national association and section president of the association in California, respectively. She died on February 15, 1922 and was buried at the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. She was 89 years old.

Regarding the experiences of Judkins and other Civil War nurses, perhaps it was best said by American novelist, poet, and volunteer Civil War nurse Louisa May Alcott in her Hospital Sketches (1863): “My ward was divided into three rooms; and, under favor of the matron, I had managed to sort out the patients in such a way that I had what I called, my ‘duty room,’ my ‘pleasure room,’ and my ‘pathetic room,’ and worked for each in a different way. One, I visited, armed with a dressing tray, full of rollers, plasters, and pins; another, with books, flowers, games, and gossip; and third, with teapots, lullabies, consolation, and sometimes, a shroud.”

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