Sarah Palmer Young

Sarah Palmer Young, born Sarah Graham in Ithaca, New York in 1830, was an American regimental nurse in the Civil War, remembered by the nickname Aunt Becky. In September 1862, after her first husband had died, she left her two daughters with relatives and followed the 109th New York Volunteer Infantry to Maryland, nursing its soldiers through the Siege of Petersburg and beyond. In 1867 she published The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life, co-authored with Sylvia Lawson Covey, an account largely dictated from memory because most of her diary had been lost. After remarrying and moving to Des Moines, Iowa, she raised funds for soldiers during the Spanish-American War and became president of the Iowa Sanitation Commission. She died in 1908.