Hannah Judkins Starbird
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August 10, 1832
Hannah Judkins Starbird | |
|---|---|
 Hannah Judkins Starbird, from an 1895 publication. | |
| Born | Hannah Elizabeth Judkins August 10, 1832 Skowhegan, Maine |
| Died | February 15, 1922 Los Angeles, California |
Hannah Elizabeth Judkins Starbird (August 10, 1832 – February 15, 1922) served as an army nurse in the American Civil War. Later she was an officer of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War.
Hannah Judkins was born August 10, 1832, in Skowhegan, Maine, the daughter of Levi Judkins and Hannah Emery Judkins. Her grandfather, John Emery, fought in the American Revolutionary War.[1]
Career
Judkins was a schoolteacher in Maine for nine years before the war.[1][2] She became an army nurse in 1864, working at Carver Hospital in Washington, D.C. and St. John's College Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland until the war's end in 1865.[3] Her patients at St. John's were Union Army men, newly released from Confederate prisons. She wrote, "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. In many cases their minds were demented, and they could give no information as to friends or home, and died in that condition, their graves being marked 'Unknown'."[1][4]
In 1910 she was elected junior vice-president of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War.[5] In 1913, she was section president of the Army Nurses' Association in California and Arizona.[6]
