Highlights Archives
The Diary of a Civil War Nurse
Each summer the Society publishes an original historic diary online. Each day's journal entry is published on the same date as the original entry was written, and readers can have it automatically delivered each morning by RSS feed. This year we present the private notes and reflections of 23-year-old Emilie Quiner, who left a comfortable Wisconsin home to nurse wounded soldiers during the Civil War. In June 1863, wanting to be useful during the country's crisis, she traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to work in the Gayoso Hospital. Her diary reveals how she decided to go south, her journey to Memphis, social life among the soldiers and nurses, the condition of the sick and wounded, and finally her return to Madison in August.
Diary Documents Civil War History Firsthand
Within just a few weeks, Emilie evolved from a naive observer of the war to a hardened participant. She comforts the sick and dying, writes home to relatives, consoles grieving mothers, turns down a marriage proposal, and reflects on the human costs of war. The final entries describe Emilie's conflict with her father, who insisted that she stay in Madison to help him write his Military History of Wisconsin rather than return to the South.
After the war, Emilie was among the first women to earn a degree at the University of Wisconsin. In 1869 she moved to Chicago to teach in the city's public schools. A decade later, she started life over again in Denver, Colorado, where she taught for another 25 years. She died at her sister's home in Chicago in 1919. Little more is known about her.
Emilie's journal came to the Society in 1956 from John Temple Simpson of Houston, Texas. Its previous history is not known. It has often been cited by historians because Emilie was a careful observer and a thoughtful writer. Her descriptions and reflections reveal much about medical practice and women's experiences during the Civil War. This online edition and its notes were prepared by Andrea Rottmann, a graduate intern from Berlin, Germany, who is working at the Society this summer.
Follow Emily's Daily Diary Entries Online
Emilie's thoughts appear each morning in our Historic Diaries collection. You can have them delivered to your personal Web page overnight by following these instructions. Her entire manuscript diary is online at Turning Points in Wisconsin History.
:: Posted July 27, 2009
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