Estelle Johnson (Civil War nurse)

Estelle Johnson (1841 to 1910) was a Union nurse in the American Civil War. She and her sister, Lydia Wood, enlisted on 20 September 1861 when their husbands joined the 4th Vermont Volunteers, and the two couples served together with the regiment. On reaching Camp Griffin, Johnson helped set up a hospital in an abandoned house that at first lacked even cots; once word of its poor conditions spread, supplies were sent, and she eventually became matron of the hospital that cared for the Vermont Brigade. Typhoid fever swept the camp: her husband recovered but her sister died. Johnson travelled to Washington, D.C., where she met Dorothea Dix, and she left the service on 23 March 1862 after about six months, some time after her husband was discharged following an injury.