Annie Damer

Annie Damer (1858 to 1915) was a Canadian-born nurse who made her career in the United States and became one of the principal organizers of American nursing around the turn of the twentieth century. Born in Stratford, Ontario, she entered the New York City Training School connected with Bellevue Hospital and graduated in 1885. She later worked in Buffalo, where as president of the Buffalo Nurses' Association she helped organize the 1901 congress of the International Council of Nurses, and in 1904 she returned to New York to take charge of the outdoor tuberculosis department of Bellevue Hospital, work for which she is remembered as a pioneer of tuberculosis nursing in New York State. She served as president of the New York State Nurses' Association, of the Associated Alumnae of the United States, the forerunner of the American Nurses Association, and of the American Journal of Nursing Company. A carriage accident in 1910 ended her career, and she died in New York City in 1915.