Abigail Gibbons

Abigail Gibbons (Hopper)

• Abigail Gibbons (Hopper) Wikipedia Page
• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 32293674

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.