Echoes From Hospital and White House

[David Lockmiller]

(12-03-2017 06:46 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  This site is (always) well worth reading:
http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/resi...1817-1884/

This reference was a bit difficult for me to read. I have tried to put some major portions of this narrative in logical order for purposes of clarification to other readers. Necessarily, some important discussion sections were left out and therefore the entire referenced material should be read for this reason. I hope that I have been thoroughly correct in my editing of the textual material. I intend no offense.

Rebecca R. Pomroy was a widowed army nurse who served at the White House in February and March 1862 when Tad and Willie were sick and Mrs. Lincoln was overcome by grief at Willie’s death. Mrs. Pomroy was first recruited when chief army nurse Dorothea Dix went to the White House to see how she might help the grieving family. The President asked Miss Dix if she could recommend to him a good nurse. She told him there was one out of her corps of nurses that she thought would give him perfect satisfaction.

Although both the physician in charge of Pomroy’s hospital and Mrs. Pomroy herself objected, Dix insisted and ordered her to the White House. Both Mrs. Pomroy and her soldier patients were upset. “Oh, if I could only have staid with my boys!” she said to [Dorothea] Dix, who replied: “Dear child, you don’t know what the Lord has in store for you. Others can look after your boys, but I have chosen you out of two hundred and fifty nurses to make yourself useful to the head of the nation. What a privilege is yours!”

When [Tad] recovered in early March, she returned to her hospital. . . . The President accompanied her back to her post, telling her: “When you get to be an old lady, Mrs. Pomroy, tell your grandchildren how indebted the nation was to you in holding up my hands in time of trouble.”

Late in March, Mrs. Pomroy paid another visit. Mrs. Lincoln was very depressed in the months after Willie’s death. Mrs. Pomroy wrote that “a note was sent to Miss Dix from the President, requesting her to come and keep Mrs. Lincoln company, as Mrs. Edwards, her sister, was called suddenly home to Illinois. Miss Dix, of course, granted his request, and, for fear I might lose my pleasant ward in the hospital, the President wrote to the surgeon in charge, requesting him to reserve my place for me when I should return. So here I am, safe under his protection.”

[Upon completion of her mission], the President ordered carriage and horses to accompany her to the College hospital. There had been a severe shower the night before, and ongoing up Fourteenth Street the horses became unmanageable, while the carriage got fast in the mud. Mr. Lincoln told the driver to hold one horse, while the footman held the other, till he could get out. He succeeded in finding three large stones, and, with his pantaloons stripped to his knees, and boots covered with mud, he laid the stones down and bore his weight upon them. On coming to the carriage he said, “Now, Mrs. Pomroy, if you will please put your feet just as I tell you, you can reach the sidewalk in safety.” Taking hold of her hand, he helped her to the sidewalk, then, looking up, he said, ”All through life, be sure and put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm.”

Mrs. Pomroy got in trouble with patients and fellow hospital staffers when Mr. Lincoln came to visit. As he left, she told three black staffers to flank her. “This is Lucy, formerly a slave from Kentucky. She cooks the nurse’ food,” Mrs. Pomroy told Mr. Lincoln. As he shook her hand, President Lincoln turned to the men on her left. “This is Garner and this Brown. They are serving their country by cooking the low diet for our sickest boys.” President Lincoln shook their hands as he said: “How do you do, Garner? How do you do, Brown?” While her white colleagues were shocked, her black colleagues were thrilled by Mrs. Pomroy’s initiative.”

When Mrs. Lincoln was injured in July 1863, Mrs. Pomroy again returned to nurse the President’s wife back to health.