Eliza George

Elizabeth George (October 20, 1808 – May 9, 1865), nicknamed "Mother George" by the Union army soldiers under her care, served the final two-and-a-half years of her life as a volunteer nurse in the South during the American Civil War. Initially discouraged from serving because of her age and the harsh conditions of wartime service, the fifty-four-year-old widow left her Fort Wayne, Indiana, home in February 1863 and died in May 1865 of typhoid fever, which she contracted while nursing soldiers and civilians at Wilmington, North Carolina, a month after the end of the war. George was buried with full military honors at Lindenwood Cemetery in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a monument erected near her gravesite pays tribute to her wartime service.

In 1863–64, George worked in Union army hospitals in the Western Theater of the war at Memphis, Tennessee, Corinth, Mississippi, and Pulaski, Tennessee, as well as delivering wagonloads of medical supplies and other goods to the Union hospitals and soldiers and transporting additional supplies from Indiana to Union soldiers and hospitals in the South. She also served on hospital trains that transported injured Union soldiers to Chattanooga, Tennessee, during Union General William T. Sherman's Atlanta campaign. As part of the XV Corps hospital, she nursed ill and wounded Union soldiers at field hospitals and near the front lines, including the Battle of Jonesborough (August 31–September 1, 1864), and spent the winter of 1864–65 working in hospitals at Nashville, Tennessee, during the Confederate army's unsuccessful attempt to seize the city. George's final posting in 1865, before her death at Wilmington, North Carolina, coincided with the transfer of nearly 11,000 newly freed Union prisoners-of-war from Salisbury Prison.

Early life and family Elizabeth "Eliza" Hamilton was born at Bridport, Vermont, on October 20, 1808. She married Woodbridge C. George sometime prior to 1850, when it is believed that she moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana. George was the mother of three daughters: Belle G. (George) Bayless (1836–1909), Eliza M. (George) Bass Burritt (1834–1914), and Jane "Jennie" M. (George) Jones.

Sion Bass served as a colonel in the Union army, helped to organize the 30th Indiana Infantry Regiment, and became its first commander. His death from wounds he received at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 was a catalyst for George's service as a wartime nurse.

George left Fort Wayne in February 1863 to volunteer her serves at the Union army hospital at Memphis, where wounded Union soldiers were transported following the Siege of Vicksburg in western Mississippi. In October 1863, after a brief return home on leave, she was transferred a hospital in Corinth, Mississippi. "Mother George," as she was called by the soldiers under her care, also made several trips between Corinth and Memphis, a distance of about , to deliver wagonloads of supplies for Union hospitals and other goods for Union soldiers.

Death and legacy The Indiana Sanitary Commission sent Doctor William H. Wishard, a physician from Indianapolis, Indiana, to care for George at Wilmington, but she did not recover. She died on May 9, 1865, a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, at the end of the war.

George, who spent the final two-and-a-half years of her life as a Civil War nurse, cared for thousands of sick and wounded soldiers during the war. Her remains were returned to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and interred on May 16, 1865, at the city's Lindenwood Cemetery with full military honors.

Honors and tributes In December 1865, the Indiana Sanitary Commission and the Fort Wayne Ladies Aid Society were granted permission to erect a monument near George's gravesite at Lindenwood Cemetery as a tribute to her wartime service. Private donations paid for the memorial; the local cemetery company donated the lot. The LaSalle Bed and Breakfast Inn, which includes the historic Sion Bass House in Fort Wayne's West End Historic District has one of the bedrooms in the Bass home named in George's honor.