Abigail Gibbons

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Abigail Gibbons (Hopper)

Also Known As: ""Abby""
Birthdate:
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Death: January 16, 1893 (91)
New York, New York County, New York, United States
Place of Burial: Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn Kings County New York,
Immediate Family:

Daughter of Isaac Hopper, Father of Underground Railroad and Sarah Hopper
Wife of James Sloan Gibbons
Mother of Sarah Hopper Emerson; Julia Gibbons; William Gibbons and Lucy Morse
Sister of Edward Hopper and John Tatum Hopper
Half sister of Thomas Hopper and Hannah Hopper

Managed by: Private User
Last Updated:
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Immediate Family

About Abigail Gibbons

Abigail Gibbons (Hopper)

Abigail Hopper Gibbons, (December 7, 1801 – January 16, 1893) was an American abolitionist, schoolteacher, and social welfare activist. She assisted in founding and led several nationally known societies for social reform during and following the Civil War.

In 1833, Abigail Hopper married James Sloan Gibbons, a fellow Hicksite Quaker from New York, who was also an ardent abolitionist. In 1836, the couple moved to New York City, where they had six children. Two of their sons died in infancy. A third died suddenly after an accident while he was attending Harvard University. Their daughters included Sarah Emerson Gibbons, who published an edited collection of her mother's letters and a short biography of her, and Lucy Gibbons (who married a Mr. Morse and had a family).

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Gibbons knew that nurses would be needed to care for the wounded. The United States Sanitary Commission was established in 1861, shortly after the Civil War began, to recruit nurses and to provide adequate medical care to the Union wounded. It would undertake numerous fundraising efforts to raise money for these purposes. When the Commission set up a training base at David's Island Hospital in New York, Gibbons was among the trainees.

She traveled to Washington D.C., to help at the Washington Office Hospital, where she aided wounded officers and distributed supplies. She also helped to establish two field hospitals in Virginia. At Point Lookout, Maryland, the federal government took over a hotel and 100 guest cottages, converting them into a hospital complex with accommodations for 1500 soldiers. It was named Hammond General Hospital. Gibbons vied with Dorothea Dix, the Union Superintendent of Nurses, for control of the hospital. She finally gained an appointment as its head matron. In 1863 she left the facility after the hospital was adapted for use as the Point Lookout Confederate Prison.

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Abigail Gibbons's Timeline

1801
December 7, 1801
Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
1834
1834
1835
September 19, 1835
New York City, New York County, New York, United States
1837
1837
1839
October 30, 1839
New York, New York County, NY, United States
1893
January 16, 1893
Age 91
New York, New York County, New York, United States
January 18, 1893
Age 91
Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn Kings County New York,