One Woman in a Million

On July 2, 1863, in the storm of chaos that swirled around the Sherfy Peach Orchard that abutted the Emmitsburg Road, a horde of soldiers in blue and gray collided.  The battle between Lafayette McLaws’s Confederates and the Union Third Corps Federals, commanded by Dan Sickles, was destined for deadly destruction.  In the midst of the dark turbulence, there was a woman with the soldiers of the 3rd Michigan Infantry.  Undaunted by the bullets and shrapnel that zipped around her, she quietly dressed wounds, gave water, and offered comfort to the men in the front lines.  The men knew her well, as she had nursed and protected soldiers from Michigan practically since the beginning of the war.  She was 24-year-old Anna Etheridge.  Her regiment called her “ Gentle Annie.” ¹

Anna Etheridge was born Lorinda Anna Blair, the daughter of John and Cynthia Blair, on May 3, 1839 in Detroit, Michigan.  There has been some confusion that she might have been named Lucinda Blair and born in 1855 – but Lucinda was Anna’s half-sister.  Anna was the eldest child, followed by two younger surviving siblings, Edwin and Elsie Maria, in 1845 and 1848.  Their mother, Cynthia Blair, died in 1852.  John remarried in 1844, and three half-sisters were born: Lucinda, Mary, and Charlotte.²

Anna’s stepmother was not much older than she was, and it is not surprising that Anna married the first of her three husbands, David Kellogg, Jr. on her seventeenth birthday in 1856, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.  The marriage ended when the war started in 1861.  David did not enlist at the time for the Union cause, but Anna hoped to serve.  She moved back to Michigan and offered to help with the 2nd Michigan regiment.  She left for Virginia as a nurse, and was present at the First Battle of Manassas in July, 1861.  The 2nd Michigan was held in reserve for the battle, and not engaged.  Annie had already experienced battle, however, at Blackburn’s Ford, which took place three days before First Manassas, on July 18.³

“She was ‘our Annie’ indeed,” recalled one of her soldiers, “sympathizing and comforting us in sickness, sharing our perils on the battlefield and binding up our wounds.” ⁴

For the remainder of 1861, largely due to government disapproval of women in the field, Anna left the 2nd Michigan and worked with other nurses on transport ships.  She at times entered enemy territory to retrieve the wounded from Virginia field hospitals. ⁵

In May, 1862, women were permitted to return to field duty, and Anna wasted no time in complying.  For reasons unknown, she joined the 3rd Michigan Regiment, the unit with which she remained for the rest of the war.  In the interim, Anna had also remarried.  Her husband was James Etheridge.⁶

Anna soon found herself at the Battle of Williamsburg, and, undeterred by the maelstrom around her, dressed wounds at the front in the midst of great danger.  At the Battle of Second Manassas, General Philip Kearny noticed her, and insisted that she be given a horse, and be put on the army payroll.  Unfortunately, he was killed on September 1, 1862, before he could submit the recommendation, and Annie continued her work without pay – although she was eventually given a horse.⁷   

Annie was nearly captured during her service, and had some deadly close calls.  At Second Manassas, most of the army had vacated the area, while she remained behind to care for the wounded.  A young “noble-looking boy, to whose parched lips she had held the cooling draught, and had bound up his wounds…faintly murmured, ‘God’s blessing on you’, when a shot from the rebel battery tore him to pieces under her very hands.”  At Chancellorsville, she was wounded in the hand while nursing her boys during the battle.⁸

After General Kearny’s death, General David Birney was promoted to division command in the Federal Third Corps.  Dan Sickles commanded the Third Corps after the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.  To honor General Kearny’s memory, some deserving individuals, from officers to private soldiers, received the Kearny Cross for distinction in their service.  On May 27, 1863, one of the recipients was Anna Etheridge.  “As she received the medal from the hands of Gen. Birney,” remembered one veteran, “there was not a soldier in the division, who did not feel that it was a just and fitting tribute to a brave woman.”⁹

Anna remained with the 3rd Michigan from Virginia to Gettysburg, riding her horse among them.  She had her own tent in the camp.  “’Our Annie’,” said one of the Michigan men, “ was one of us and always with us, riding her own horse at the rear of the regiment with the surgeon.”¹⁰

When the men of the 3rd Michigan were sent into the fight at Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard, Anna was among them.  One of the soldiers from the 116th Pennsylvania, part of the Irish Brigade, remembered seeing her near the Abraham Trostle Farm: “A woman on horseback and in uniform galloped back from the line of battle, asked for some information, and quickly returned to the front again.  She was a nurse of the Third Corps, Anna Etheridge, and was directing the removal of the wounded.  She was cool and self-possessed and did not seem to mind the fire.”¹¹

Anna was prepared for trouble.  She was known to carry two pistols in her belt, and she knew how to use them.

Anna traveled with the 3rd Michigan to New York after Gettysburg, as they were among the troops needed to quell the New York City Draft Riots.  One of the Michigan men remembered seeing visitors to Annie’s tent near Troy, New York once the riots had been stopped: “Annie’s tent is besieged with visitors.  People come from far in the rural districts to get a sight of the great heroine…We do not blame them much, for indeed she is a curiosity, as she is one woman in a million who would leave a home of luxury and cast her lot with the soldiers of the field, who are all proud of her.” ¹²

During the summer of 1864, Anna worked at the Second Corps Hospital at City Point, Virginia.  She sent food to the 3rd Michigan as often as possible, knowing that they needed to know she had not forgotten them.  By the fall she had returned to the 3rd Michigan, at their request, and received a heroine’s welcome.  She was present at the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House.  After the war, she settled in Washington, D.C.¹³

Anna’s second marriage ended with the termination of the conflict.  It was in the nation’s capital that Anna met her third husband, Corporal Charles Hook of the 7th Connecticut Infantry.  They wed in 1870 and remained married until Charles’s death in 1910.¹⁴

In 1887, Congress approved an army pension for the aging Anna Etheridge Hook for $25 per month. ¹⁵

On January 23, 1913, the widowed Lorinda Anna Blair Etheridge Hook died in Washington, D.C. at age 73.  She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, a fitting final honor for the woman who braved the severest of firestorms on numerous fields of battle.

The boys who endured that storm by her side never forgot her service, or her kindness, to them.  “England can boast of the achievements of Florence Nightingale, we of America can present a still higher example of female heroism and exalted acts of humanity in the person of Anna Etheridge.” ¹⁶

It is high, and well deserved, praise.