Esther Hasson

Esther Voorhees Hasson (1867 to 1942) was an American nurse who became the first Superintendent of the United States Navy Nurse Corps. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she graduated from the Connecticut Training School for Nurses in New Haven in 1897. During the Spanish-American War she served as a contract nurse with the US Army, on the hospital ship Relief and in the Philippines, and she later nursed in Panama from 1905 to 1907. When the Navy Nurse Corps was established in 1908 she took the oath of office as its first Superintendent on 18 August and, working with Surgeon General Presley Marion Rixey, recruited nineteen further nurses, who became known as the Sacred Twenty. The Corps had grown to 85 trained nurses when she resigned in January 1911. She rejoined the Army as a reserve nurse in 1917 and died in 1942 after being struck by a trolley.