Rebecca Wiswell

Wiswell was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts,^[1] the daughter of George Rix Wiswell and Salome Nickerson Wiswell.^[3] Her father was a sea captain, born in England.^[4]

Wiswell was a nurse in Boston for much of her life,^[5] and was a skilled weaver, spinner, knitter and quiltmaker.^[3][6] She was a Union Army nurse during the American Civil War,^[7] serving from 1862 to 1865 under Dorothea Dix at the Seminary Hospital in Georgetown, D.C., and at hospitals in Winchester and Fortress Monroe.^[6][8] Wiswell presented letters signed by Dix and several physicians and politicians, and by former patients, as evidence for her successful 1886 petition to Congress, requesting a federal pension. The Plymouth post of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Plymouth Board of Selectmen, also endorsed her petition.^[9] In reviewing her petition, the House Committee on Invalid Pensions declared that "this claimant is a most worthy woman."^[10]

In 1876, for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Wiswell and one of her sisters demonstrated spinning and weaving in the New England Log Cabin exhibit. She played a character called "Aunt Tabitha". She also demonstrated spinning and weaving at the Soldiers' Home Bazar in Boston.^[4]

Wiswell was known for singing hymns of early New England.^[11] She died in 1897, at the age of 91, in Plymouth.^[2][12] The Rebecca Wiswell Tent of the Daughters of Veterans, a chapter based in Quincy, Massachusetts, was named in her memory.^[13]