Alexandria During the Civil War: First Person Accounts
A Head Nurse

Clarissa Jones was the head nurse at the Baptist Church hospital in Alexandria. The following excerpt is from a letter from Nurse Jones, dated September 12, 1862, courtesy The National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Frederick, Maryland. See this letter, and more on Clarissa Jones, in the exhibition Occupied City: Life in Civil War Alexandria, at The Lyceum: Alexandria’s History Museum, through September 2013.

Nurse Clarissa Jones, writes of turning away Southern sympathizing women who try to bring things to the Confederate POW patients at the Baptist Church hospital.

From Nurse Jones' Letter

We have 9 Sesesh prisoners in the Church opposite to which we belong, being under the same officers, etc. Certain females come daily with grapes, peaches & the like to give to them [Confederate POW patients] alone --- that is not allowable, for all the good things sent to the institution are equally divided, and this we explain, but not to their satisfaction. They become terribly worked up and in a majority of cases go off with their contributions. They do not understand what it is to be lady-like in their conversation or behavior. We have a flag over the door now to keep them out; they have a holy horror of the article and even to attend to their own sick will hardly subject themselves to the degradation of coming under it