Emily Elizabeth Parsons

Emily Elizabeth Parsons (1824 to 1880) was an American nurse and hospital administrator who served during the American Civil War and later founded Mount Auburn Hospital in Massachusetts. In the war she tended wounded Union soldiers and managed the nursing staff at Benton Barracks Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. After her death a memoir of her life was published under the title Fearless Purpose: Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons. The book is valued because it gives a rare view of the war from the position of a nurse, describing the daily work of caring for soldiers and of running a ward staff in a military hospital far from the front lines.