MRS. JERUSHA R. SMALL.

HIS young lady was one of the martyrs of the war. She resided in Cascade, Dubuque County, Iowa, and just previous to the commencement of the war had buried her only child, a sweet little girl of four years.

When volunteers were called for from Iowa, her husband, Mr. J. E. Small, felt it his duty to take up arms for his country, and as his wife had no home ties she determined to go with him and make herself useful in caring for the sick and wounded of his regiment, or of other regiments in the same division. She proved a most excellent nurse, and for months labored with untiring energy in the regimental hospitals, and to hundreds of the wounded from Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh, as well as to the numerous sick soldiers of General Grant's army she was an angel of mercy. Her constant care and devotion had considerably impaired her health before the battle of Shiloh.

At this battle her husband was badly wounded and taken prisoner, but was retaken by the Union troops. In the course of the battle, the tent which she occupied and where she was ministering to the wounded came within range of the enemy's shells, and she with her wounded husband and a large number of other wounded soldiers, were obliged to fly for their lives, leaving all their goods behind them. Previous to her flight, however, she had torn up all her spare clothing and dresses to make bandages and compresses and pillows for the wounded soldiers. She found her way with her wounded patients to one of the hospitals extempo

rized by the Cincinnati ladies. Her husband and many of his comrades of the Twelfth Iowa Regiment were among this company of wounded men. She craved admission for them and remained to nurse her husband and the others for several weeks, but when her husband became convalescent, she was compelled to take to her bed; her fatigue and exposure, acting upon a somewhat frail and delicate constitution had brought on galloping consumption. She soon learned from her physician that there was no hope of her recovery, and then the desire to return home and die in her mother's arms seemed to take entire possession of her soul. Permission was obtained for her to go, and for her husband to accompany her, and when she was removed from the boat to the cars, Mrs. Dr. Mendenhall of the Cincinnati Branch of the Sanitary Commission accompanied her to the cars, and having provided for her comfortable journey, gave her a parting kiss. Mrs. Small was deeply affected by this kindness of a stranger, and thanking her for her attention to herself and husband, expressed the hope that they should meet in a better world. A lady, who evidently had little sympathy with the war or with those who sought to alleviate the sufferings of the soldiers, stepped up and said to Mrs. Small; "You did very wrong to go and expose yourself as you have done when you were so young and frail." "No!" replied the dying woman, "I feel that I have done right, I think I have been the means of saving some lives, and that of my dear husband among the rest; and these I consider of far more value than mine, for now they can go and help our country in its hour of need."

Mrs. Small lived to reach home, but died a few days after her arrival. She requested that her dead body might be wrapped in the national flag, for next to her husband and her God, she loved the country which it represented, best. She was buried with military honors, a considerable number of the soldiers of the Twelfth Iowa who were home on furlough, taking part in the sad procession.

MRS. S. A. MARTHA CANFIELD.

HIS lady was the wife of Colonel Herman Canfield, of the Seventy-first Ohio Regiment. She accompanied her husband to the field, and devoted herself to the care and succor of the sick and wounded soldiers, until the battle of Shiloh, where her husband was mortally wounded, and survived but a few hours. She returned home with his body and remained for a short time, but feeling that it was in her power to do something for the cause to which her husband had given his life, she returned to the Army of the Mississippi and became attached to the Sixteenth Army Corps, and spent most of her time in the hospitals of Memphis and its vicinity. But though she accomplished great good for the soldiers, she took a deep interest also in the orphans of the freedmen in that region, and by her extensive acquaintance and influence with the military authorities, she succeeded in establishing and putting upon a satisfactory basis, the Colored Orphan Asylum in Memphis. She devoted her whole time until the close of the war to these two objects; the welfare of the soldiers in the hospitals and the perfecting of the Orphan Asylum, and not only gave her time but very largely also of her property to the furthering of these objects. The army officers of that large and efficient army corps bear ample testimony to her great usefulness and devotion.

495

MRS. E. THOMAS, AND MISS MORRIS.

HESE two ladies, sisters, volunteered as unpaid nurses for the War, from Cincinnati. They commenced their duties at the first opening of the Hospitals, and remained faithful to their calling, until the hospitals were closed, after the termination of the war. In cold or heat, under all circumstances of privation, and often when all the other nurses were stricken down with illness, they never faltered in their work, and, although not wealthy, gave freely of their own means to secure any needed comfort for the soldiers. Mrs. Mendenhall, of Cincinnati, who knew their abundant labors, speaks of them as unsurpassed in the extent and continuousness of their sacrifices.

496

MRS. SHEPARD WELLS.

HIS lady, the wife of Rev. Shepard Wells, was, with her husband, driven from East Tennessee by the rebellion, because of their loyalty to the Union. They found

their way to St. Louis at an early period of the War, where he entered into the work of the Christian Commission for the Union soldiers, and she became a member of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, of St. Louis, and gave herself wholly to sanitary labors for the sick and wounded in the Hospitals of that city, acting also as one of the Secretaries of the Society, and as its agent in many of its works of benevolence, superintending at one time the Special Diet Kitchen, established by the Society at Benton Barracks, and doing an amount of work which few women could endure, animated and sustained by a genuine love of doing good, by noble and Christian purposes, and by true patriotism and philanthropy.

The incidents of the persecutions endured by Mr. and Mrs. Wells, in East Tennessee, and of her life and labors among the sick and wounded of the Union army, would add very much to the interest of this brief notice, but the particulars are not sufficiently familiar to the writer to be narrated by him, and he can only record the impressions he received of her remarkable faithfulness and efficiency, and her high Christian motives, in the labors she performed in connection with the Ladies' Union Aid Society, of St. Louis,-that noble Society of heroic women who, during the whole war, performed an amount of sanitary, hospital