Nun Honored for Civil War Service, 1910

In 1910, Sister M. Anastasia Quinn, who nursed in the Douglas Hospital, was still living at Mount St. Agnes College, Baltimore. In recognition of her services during the war, a committee consisting of Past Commander in Chief John R. King, Past Department Commander Maj. Frederick C. Farr, and William J. Klugg, past commander of Wilson Post, of the Grand Army of the Republic, visited her at Mount St. Agnes, May 21, and presented her with a bronze pin. In presenting it Gen. King said:

Sister Anastasia, at the Thirty-eighth National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held at San Francisco, an order was passed to have prepared a suitable medal to be presented to the Army nurses of the Civil War as a token of our appreciation of their self-sacrificing work and our undying gratitude for their priceless services, a service rendered under most trying circumstances, when these noble women abadoned all thought of self, and labored to aid the sick and wounded, to soothe the last hours of many a dying comrade. These badges, under the resolution, were to be presented to the members of the Army Nurses’ Association. When I became Commander-in-Chief it came to my knowledge that there were Catholic sisters who were Army nurses, but not members of that association.


I thought they were also entitled to our consideration, so at the National Encampment at Denver, Colo., provision was made to similarly honor those good sisters. As you, my dear sister, were one of those noble women sent of God as ministering angels to alleviate the suffering of the Union soldier and nurse him back to health, to soothe the dying hero and make smooth his pathway to the grave, we are here as representatives of the Grand Army of the Republic to present you this small token of our gratitude for services you rendered. It is but a small bit of bronze, of no intrinsic value but, O, my dear sister how much it represents! The tears, the prayers, the gratitude that go with it from every survivor of that dreadful war.


We feel that you were one of us; that your sacrifices were as great as ours, for it was not always that the greatest praise was due to the man who stood on the firing line, for there were heroines with ever watchful eye and loving sympathy, waiting in the rear to minister to him who might fall in the shock of battle.


Take this, dear sister, and wear it, and as you wear it, a flood of memories will come back to you of the many scenes through which you passed in those unhappy days of “grim-visaged war.” With you, as with us, the shadows are lengthening, and we pray that He who “covered our heads in the day of battle” will be with you through the remaining years of your journey and at last give you abundant entrance into those everlasting joys above, where there will be no more wars or rumors of war.

About one month after receiving the Grand Army of the Republic Medal, Sister Anastasia died. Under her pillow, wrapped in the American flag, was found the bronze medal, a token of her country’s appreciation.

Sister Mary Eulalia Herron, R.S.M., The Sisters of Mercy in the United States, 1843-1928 (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 135-136.