Hettie Jones, Civil War Nurse

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=22321916

The daughter of Reverend Horatio Gates Jones, a prominent Baptist Minister, and the sister of Colonel John Richter Jones, Colonel of the 58th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, she worked to help equip the men volunteering from her neighborhood after the start of the Civil War. When word came in May 1863 that her brother had been killed in action in North Carolina, she left her comfortable life in Roxborough, Philadelphia, and devoted herself to the care of the wounded Union soldiers as a nurse. She first volunteered herself at the Filbert Street United States Army General Hospital in Philadelphia, where she worked diligently and tirelessly for over a year. Asked to accompany a friend to see her wounded son in Virginia, Hetty Jones traveled to Fortress Monroe, Virginia in the fall of 1864.

There she saw the suffering soldiers as the were immediately transported from the field, and it left an indelible impression on her. She returned from her trip, but left again in November for City Point, Virginia, which was the headquarters of Union commander General Ulysses S. Grant. In the latter half of November 1864 she worked hard to help prepared the Thanksgiving dinner for the troops there, and was struck down by sickness. 

She recovered partially, and resumed her duties the best she could, but in the end, sickness struck her down permanently, and she died in her tent in the field on December 21, 1864. During her funeral, her body was borne by convalescing soldiers that knew her from the Filbert Street Hospital, and she was laid to rest near next to her late father and near her slain brother. Years later the Grand Army Republic Post in Roxborough - Post Number 12 - was named in her honor, one of only two such GAR post in Pennsylvania named for a woman.