Mary Phinney of Olnhausen

Portrait of Mary Phinney from the frontispiece of her posthumously published diaries

Mary Phinney von Olnhausen (born February 3, 1818 in Lexington , Massachusetts , † 1902 in Boston ) was an American nurse and abolitionist . From her diaries emerged the book Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars ( Adventure of an Army Nurse in Two Wars ). The diaries are considered a valuable historical resource for medical techniques during the American Civil War .

Life

Phinney's parents were lawyer Elias Phinney and Catherine Bartlett Phinney. Mary Phinney was the fifth of ten children. She had six sisters and three brothers. Mary Phinney received training from several academies. When her father died in 1849 at the age of 69, her parents' farm was sold and she “looked for a job as a print designer” at the Manchester Mills. There she met Gustav Baron von Olnhausen (1814-1860), a nephew of Wilhelm Heinrich von Kurrer , who had left Saxony after the unrest and financial difficulties of 1848 and sold his castle. He made his living as a chemist in a dye works at Manchester Mills. They were married on May 1, 1858 when Phinney was 40 years old. Gustav von Olnhausen died two years later, in 1860.

military service

Mary Phinney von Olnhausen was head nurse at Mansion House Hospital

During the American Civil War, Phinney von Olnhausen served as a nurse at Mansion House Hospital in Alexandria , Virginia and Mansfield General Hospital in Morehead , North Carolina . After the war, in August 1865, she was released and returned home to help her brother raise his children in Illinois .

With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, she volunteered as a nurse for service in the Prussian army and was accepted as Baroness von Olnhausen. She served in field hospitals in Meung-sur-Loire and Vendôme , for which she was awarded the Iron Cross by Emperor Wilhelm I in 1873 . She died in Boston in April 1902.

Mercy Street miniseries

In 2015, the American television station PBS produced the twelve-episode mini-series Mercy Street about the Mansion House Hospital in the Masterpiece Theater series , in which Phinney served, who dined heavily on her diaries. The main character, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead , is based on Phinney's biography.

further reading

• Pamela D. Toler, Ridley Scott: Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War . Little, Brown and Company , New York City 2016, ISBN 978-0316392075 .

Web links

Commons : Mary Phinney  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Mary Phinney: Adventures of an army nurse in two wars; Edited from the diary and correspondence of Mary Phinney, baroness von Olnhausen . Ed .: James Phinney Munroe. Little, Brown, and Company, Boston 1904, ISBN 978-1-164-37466-4 , pp. 7 (English). Can be viewed online as a digitized version.
2. ^ ^{A b} Stanley B. Burns: Nursing in the Civil War - Behind the Lens: A History in Pictures. In: pbs.org. Public Broadcasting Service, accessed September 4, 2020 . 
3. ↑ M. Callahan: Civil War Nurses & The Mansion House General Hospital. New PBS Series. In: annandalechamber.com. Annandale Chamber of Commerce, accessed September 4, 2020 . 
4. ^ ^{A b} Mary Phinney: Adventures of an army nurse in two wars . S. 9 .
5. ↑ Poetry albums from Schumann's Zwickau Circle of Friends. In: schumann-zwickau.de. Robert-Schumann-Haus Zwickau, 2018, accessed on September 5, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Mary Phinney. In: History of American Women. May 13, 2016, Retrieved September 5, 2020 (American English). 
7. ↑ Pamela D. Toler, Ridley Scott: Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War . Little, Brown and Company, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-316-39207-5 .