A Mother's Work

Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse

Megan VanGorder

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781469692326
  9781469692319
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469692333
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies

Mary Ann Bickerdyke led a remarkable life. A widowed mother from Illinois, she became an influential traveling nurse and Sanitary Commission agent during the American Civil War. She followed the Union army through four years and nineteen battles, established hundreds of hospitals, assisted surgeons with amputations, treated fevers, and fed the soldiers in her care. Known affectionately as “Mother” to thousands of soldiers, Bickerdyke bridged the private world of home caregiving and the public demands of wartime and institutional medicine.

Drawing on a rich archive of personal letters, military records, and newspapers, Megan VanGorder explores how Bickerdyke used her maternal identity to challenge norms, advocate for soldiers, and pioneer compassionate care practices before, during, and after the Civil War. A Mother’s Work uses key episodes from Bickerdyke’s life to reveal broader truths about motherhood, medicine, and women’s roles in the nineteenth century, and offers an intimate and historically grounded portrait of one woman’s evolving identity and the moniker that made her famous. In reassessing Bickerdyke’s work and legacy, this book also serves as a new perspective on how white working-class women contributed to the transitional period of the Civil War era and reshaped public health, social care, and national memory.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Mother, Before the War
• Chapter Two: Becoming Mother: The Civil War and the Development of Bickerdyke’s Public Motherhood (1861–1863)
• Chapter Three: She Ranks Me: Asserting Motherhood in the Civil War (1863–1865)
• Chapter Four: Mother-Guardian: Negotiating Institutional Care after the Civil War
• Chapter Five: Mother-Nurse: Care-Switching Between Private and Public Motherhood
• Chapter Six: Special Acts of Justice: Mary Bickerdyke and Pension Claims
• Chapter Seven: The Passing of the Mother: Mary Bickerdyke and Constructed Remembrance
• Epilogue: What Did Mother Mean?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index