Mary Perkins (nurse)

Mary Perkins (1839 to 1893) was a nurse who served the Union side in the American Civil War. Born in Brewer, Maine, she moved to Enfield, Maine, and enlisted in 1861 as a nurse for the 11th Maine Volunteer Infantry. She went with the regiment to Washington, D.C., where she served at the Brigade Hospital, and when the regiment moved in March 1862 she worked at Hygeia Hospital. There she worked with Dorothea Dix throughout General McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. She left the service when her brother was injured in the war. The article records that she married Andrew Perkins and gives her death as 18 November 1893. The surviving account of her life is brief and says little about the care she gave.