Women in the Navy don’t go back quite as far as with the Army. Although the Nurses’ Corps was not established until 1908, there are records revealing women who served as Naval Nurses in the Civil War including Anne Stokes (first Black Woman on record and first Woman to receive a US pension for her own service).
Resources:
- The navy has a page about women serving the years that rivals that of the Army.
- The story of Ann Bradford Stokes is told on the Tunnel Hill (Georgia) Heritage site.
- See also the Wikipedia page. Or even better check out the sources listed in the bibliography for that page.
Women in the U.S. Navy
The first women to serve in the U.S. Navy were nurses, beginning with the “Sacred Twenty” appointed after Congress established the Navy Nurse Corps on 13 May 1908. The first large-scale enlistment of women into the Navy met clerical shortages during World War I, and the second came months before t…
From Slavery to Naval Nurse: Unwavering Ann Bradford Stokes | Tunnel Hill Heritage Center and Museum
Nursing was not a woman’s job before the Civil War, but by 1865, there were over 3,000 nurses serving the Union and Confederacy. In the North, most female nurses worked in military hospitals. African American women serving as nurses were not included in those numbers, nor were they recognized for th…
