Carrie Eliza Cutter (1842–1862) was an American nurse.

Carrie Cutter
Born1842
Died1862(1862-00-00) (aged 19–20)
Alma materMount Holyoke College
OccupationNurse

She was the daughter of surgeon Calvin Cutter. An 1861 graduate of Mount Holyoke College,[1] she helped her father in the 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as a nurse.[2] She was referred to as "the Florence Nightingale of the 21st." During Burnside's North Carolina Expedition in 1862, she worked in the field with the regiment.[3] Cutter served as a translator for German soldiers who did not speak English.[4] She was engaged to Private Charles E. Colledge from the 25th Massachusetts. She traveled to Newbern Harbor after learning that he had contracted typhoid fever. He died and she was infected,[5] dying on March 24, 1862.[2] A memorial at the Elm Street Cemetery references her as the first female death of the Civil War.[6]

Congress granted special permission for Cutter to be interred with full military honors at New Bern National Cemetery in Section 10, grave 1698 next to her betrothed, Charles Colledge. She was the first woman to be buried in the cemetery. Later, Clara Barton wrote a poem in Cutter's memory.[4]

References

edit
  1. ^ Cohen, Michael David. Reconstructing the Campus (University of Virginia Press, 2012).
  2. ^ a b Young, Charles Sumner (1922). Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian. R. G. Badger. p. 390. carrie cutter nurse.
  3. ^ Schultz, Jane E. (2004). Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America ([Nachdr.]. ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 263, 278–279. ISBN 0-8078-2867-X.
  4. ^ a b "Carrie Cutter". Historical Society of Cheshire County. Retrieved 2023-04-11.
  5. ^ Rose, Philip F. (2013). "16. Those Who Lived". John Brown's Virginia Raid. Trafford. ISBN 978-1-4669-6688-8.
  6. ^ McIntire, Tracey (2022-08-02). "Carrie Cutter - The Civil War's First Female Casualty". National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Retrieved 2023-04-11.

Further reading

edit
  • "Carrie Eliza Cutter, the Florence Nightingale of the 21st." Cutter Papers, Manuscript Division, LC.