A Southern Woman with a Calling!

In my previous post of Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Twelfth Installment) about Rose O’Neal Greenhow, I promised I’d feature another lady of Civil War times who was “A Southern Woman with a Calling.” Let me now present to you:

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember (1823 – 1913)

Phoebe was the first woman to serve as a hospital administrator below the Mason and Dixon’s Line at Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia (pictured below).

Reportedly, in the 1860s, it was considered the largest military medical facility worldwide. How could it not be with its sprawling compound comprised of: ninety medical wards; bake houses; kitchens; ice houses; soap house; stable; guard house; chapel; bathhouse; carpenter, blacksmith and apothecary shops; and five dead houses? Also, its surgeon-in-chief, James B. McCaw, was heralded for his progressive thinking; he supervised the construction of his medical wards to include wide lanes between them and liberal windows and doors to circulate fresh air for the rapid rehabilitation of his patients. The hospital would treat more than 78,000 wounded and sick soldiers.

Back to Phoebe:

Before she took on her pioneering role, she was living unhappily at home in Marietta, Georgia, widowed and childless, when she had a premonition about a Union attack on Richmond, Virginia, and she felt a call to help.

So, Phoebe headed off to the Confederate capital!

As a new face in town, Rebel authorities feared she was a Yankee spy, and they detained and grilled her for days. However, they soon learned that Phoebe was not only close friends with the wife of Confederate Secretary of War George W. Randolph, but she had knowledge of medicine and prior experience in nursing.

On December 1, 1862, Phoebe was handed over to Surgeon General Samuel Preston Moore, and she began her new position as Head Matron for one of his five medical divisions. 15,000 patients would eventually come under Phoebe’s capable administrative and nursing care.

What in Phoebe’s background made her want to answer a calling to head off to Richmond, Virginia, and serve in a city under constant barrage by the Union army?

Very simply, Phoebe was raised in a wealthy and prominent Jewish family of Charleston, South Carolina, and, just like Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow from my previous post of Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Twelfth Installment), she grew up fiercely loyal to the South.

Phoebe’s Legacy:

Besides, as mentioned above, her being the first female hospital administrator in the South, she was the last Confederate in an official position to leave conquered Richmond, Virginia.

Almost twenty years post-war, she achieved what most diarists had failed to do in publishing her memoir. It’s claimed to be unrivaled in its accounts of hospital life in the entire Confederacy and of political intrigues into the Rebel capital.

An Interesting Sidebar to Show “What a Small World It Is After All!”

Phoebe’s sister Eugenia Levy was married to Philip Phillips, a Democrat from Alabama who served a term as a U.S. Congressman (1853-1855), and he practiced law in Washington, D.C. Eugenia Levy Phillips was one of nearly fifty women who helped Rose O’Neal Greenhow, (one last time, from my previous post of Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Twelfth Installment)), to spy on the Union in Washington City. She was incarcerated twice, once being placed under house arrest with Rose at Rose’s Washington residence. Following her second imprisonment, she moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she drew the ire of Union General Benjamin F. Butler for her outspoken derision over a Union soldier’s funeral. General Butler ordered her imprisonment for several months until her husband secured her release, and General Butler was the Union officer who contacted Elizabeth “Miss Lizzie” Van Lew from my previous posts, Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Eleventh Installment, Part A) and Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Eleventh Installment, Part B), to spy on the Confederacy in her home city of Richmond, Virginia.

I’ll end here with the hopes that you’ve enjoyed this post and that I’ve whet your appetite to learn more about Phoebe Yates Levy Pember at the following places:

Video on My Complimentary Civil War Women Website.

Article on Wikipedia:
Phoebe Yates Levy Pember

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember’s Diary on Amazon:
A Southern Woman’s Diary

Stay Tuned for the Next Installment of Pioneering Women of Civil War America, Which Promises to Feature. . .

. . .A Southern Lady & Diarist!