Mehitable Ellis Woods

Union Civil War Nurse from Iowa

During the Civil War, Mehitable Ellis Woods worked for the Ladies' Aid Society of Fairfield, Iowa, delivering supplies to hospitals and the front lines, and nursing the sick and wounded wherever she was needed. In 1863 this brave lady made her first trip down the Mississippi into the heart of the Confederacy and returned many times. She was twice under fire, but escaped uninjured and lived for many years after the war.


Mehitable Woods Monument
Old Fairfield City Cemetery
Fairfield, Iowa

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Susan Landon Vaughan

Founder of Decoration Day

Image: Confederate Monument
This monument on the grounds of the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Mississippi sits about 60 feet high with a life-sized statue of a Confederate soldier on top of it.

Inside the monument is a plaque that reads:

It reeks not where their bodies lie
By bloody hillside, plains or cave;
Their names are bright on famous skies,
Their deeds of valor live forever.

Decoration Day
Originated in Jackson, Mississippi,
April 26, 1865
By Sue Landon Vaughn

Susan Hutchinson Adams was born on October 12, 1835, in St. Charles, Missouri, on the Missouri River northwest of St Louis. She and her sister Sallie were the daughters of John and Margaret Ann Gill Adams. John Adams was from Lexington, Virginia, and Margaret's family was from Culpeper County, Virginia.

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Hannah Ropes

Union Civil War Nurse

When her husband abandoned her, Hannah Ropes blossomed in her new-found self-reliance. She volunteered as a nurse in the Civil War and soon used her prominent social position to obtain enormous amounts of supplies and other necessities for the wounded.

Hannah Anderson was born June 13, 1809, in New Gloucester, Maine, the daughter and sister of prominent Maine lawyers. Hannah demonstrated her radical beliefs early in life. Her religious convictions were very strong, and she was passionately opposed to slavery. She married educator William Ropes at the age of twenty five; they lived in Waltham, Massachusetts, and had four children, two who lived to adulthood.

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