The Continental Congress’s Plans for Nurses

Yesterday I reproduced a paragraph from a U.S. military webpage that contained four quotations about Continental Army nurses attributed to Gen. Horatio Gates, Gen. George Washington, and a plan sent [by Washington’s office?] to the Continental Congress.

However, none of those quoted phrases appear in Washington’s correspondence. So where did they come from?

On 19 July 1775 the Continental Congress appointed a committee “to report the method of establishing an hospital” for its army besieging Boston.

The three delegates named to that committee were Francis Lewis of New York (shown here), Robert Treat Paine of Massachusetts, and Henry Middleton of South Carolina.

(This committee was formed two days before Washington wrote to the Congress asking for the hospital to be “immediately taken into Consideration.” The Congress was already ahead of him.)

On 24 July that committee submitted its recommendations, and three days later the Congress voted to establish a medical department for its army. Among the personnel it provided for were:

Surgeons, apothecary and mates,
To visit and attend the sick, and the mates to obey the orders of the physicians, surgeons and apothecary.

Matron. To superintend the nurses, bedding, &c.

Nurses. To attend the sick, and obey the matron’s orders.

Later in the day, the Congress agreed there should be “one nurse to every 10 sick.” It also named the man they thought best suited to direct the medical department: Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. Church lasted about two months before being exposed as a British spy.

Be that as it may, that’s the official beginning of the American army’s nursing corps. (There were women nursing sick and wounded men from the New England army before that, starting with volunteers on the first day of the war and including the first hospitals.)

That July 1775 resolution of the Congress looks like the real source of two of the four quoted phrases:

• “a matron to supervise the nurses, bedding, etc.”—not exactly from the official record but recognizable.
• nurses “to attend the sick and obey the matron’s orders.”

The reproduced passage attributes those quoted phrases to a request from Gen. Washington. But those words weren’t generated by the commander-in-chief or his staff. They came out of the Congress. There’s a hero-worshipping tendency among American authors to attribute to Washington a lot that we should credit to the institutions of democratic government.

Almost two years later, on 7 Apr 1777, the Congress again discussed how to organize its army hospitals. By this time the war had spread, so that department had grown. Its managers had a better idea of what worked. Among the provisions the Congress approved that day were:

That a matron be allowed to every hundred sick or wounded, who shall take care that the provisions are properly prepared; that the wards, beds, and utensils be kept in neat order, and that the most exact oeconomy be observed in her department:

That a nurse be allowed for every ten sick or wounded, who shall be under the direction of the matron:

This resolution is the source of the third of the four quotations (with “allotted” substituted for the original “allowed”). Those words indeed appear in a plan submitted to the Congress, as the army webpage says, but that plan was written two years into the war, not in the summer of 1775.

TOMORROW: The fourth quotation.

The Disappearance of George Penn

After George Penn sat on the Salem gallows for an hour and was whipped twenty times, as described yesterday, the authorities sent him back to the Essex County jail to finish another part of his sentence for rioting: two years’ imprisonment.

At the time, Penn was “(a Mulatto) aged thirty, five Feet nine Inches, and remarkably stout for his Heighth.”

We have that description from the 18 Aug 1772 Essex Gazette. It appeared there because of an event reported in the same paper:

The several Prisoners confined in his Majesty’s Gaol in this Town made their Escape last Saturday Night [15 August].

They were all committed on criminal Actions, viz. Charles Lee, Francis Lewis, Samuel White, William Campbell, and George Mitchell, for Theft, and George Penn, a Mulatto, for being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann two or three years ago. For the better Security of them, Mr. Brown, the Prison-Keeper, had them all confined in the two lower Apartments, which were deemed the strongest of any in the Prison.

They however, by Means of a Gimblet and Chizel, made a Hole through the Partition, which divided the two Rooms, and thereby all got together: They then bored off a square Piece of Plank in the Floor, and with the Chizel cut it quite out. Having thus got through the Floor, they applied themselves to work out a Passage through the Stones and Earth, and finally forced their Way through the Underpinning of the Building, quite into the Yard, which is inclosed with a very high Fence; they however, with their united Strength, forced open the Gate, and went off entirely undiscovered.

County sheriff Richard Saltonstall ran an advertisement in that paper describing the six escapees and offering a reward of $10. Those men ranged from “a French Lad, (as will be discovered by his speech) aged twenty” to a man “about forty Years old.”

The same newspaper also reported that a married couple who had arrived in town with the suspected thief Mitchell, “with much pretended Innocence,” had departed town suddenly, leaving behind some scraps of cloth. Also, a Danvers man reported finding a pile of clothing “hid in the Corner of a Wall,…near where Mr. Putnam found the Goods supposed to be stolen by Campbell.” So those thieves were very much on the locals’ minds.

It’s notable that the newspaper referred to the man previously called “a Mulatto Servant [i.e., slave] of Samuel Plummer, Esq; of Gloucester, named George,” with a surname. Did the full name George Penn indicate that Dr. Plumer had freed him? Or simply disowned him?

In the eighteenth century the word “stout” referred to muscle, not fat, so for George Penn to be “remarkably stout for his Heighth” suggests he contributed a lot of the “united Strength” that forced open the prison gate.

Once outside, the men presumably scattered. The harbors of Salem and neighboring towns offered plenty of opportunities to move. Sheriff Saltonstall’s advertisement appeared in the newspaper for several more weeks, into September. But so far as I can tell, George Penn was never apprehended to serve out the rest of his sentence.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to Jesse Saville?

ADDENDUM: The vital records of Ipswich report an intention of marriage on 16 July 1777 between George Penn and Flora Freewoman. There’s no racial label for either of those people, but this town may have used the appelations Freeman and Freewoman for former slaves. In the 1770s and 1780s listings are Prince, Cesar, and Titus Freeman, the latter marrying Katherine Freewoman. So George Penn may not have completely disappeared after the jailbreak, just laid low in a nearby town until the government changed.