Cornelia Hancock was a celebrated volunteer nurse, serving the injured and infirmed of the Union Army during the American Civil War. Hancock's service lasted from July 6, 1863 to May 23, 1865.
Early life
Hancock was born in Hancock's Bridge, New Jersey, to Quakers of old colonial ancestry. The youngest of four children, Hancock was educated "in the Salem academies." Her sister Ellen worked at the United States Mint in Philadelphia. Her only brother and her cousins joined the Union Army in 1862.
Hancock's chance to serve came when her brother-in-law Henry T. Child, a volunteer surgeon, offered to take her to the Gettysburg battlefield in July 1863. However, Dorothea Dix, the superintendent of Union Army nurses, personally refused to enroll Hancock because she did not meet her requirements that the military's female nurses be "mature in years, plain almost to homeliness in dress, and by no means liberally endowed with personal attractions.” In other words: at only 23, Hancock was too young and attractive to be an army nurse. Hancock was the only female nursing volunteer to be rejected. Hancock went to Gettysburg anyway. "I got into Gettysburg the night of July sixth – where the need was so great that there was no further cavil about age,” she wrote in her journal. In a letter to her sister dated July 8, 1863, Hancock wrote, "We have been two days on the field; go about eight and come in about six—go in ambulances of army buggies...I feel assured I shall never feel horrifed at anything that may happen to me here-after." Hancock responded to an immense need: the Union lacked supplies as well as staff. She had no formal training as a nurse; but after three weeks, she was tending to eight tenths of wounded. In October she tended to the large numbers of hungry and injured escaped slaves who were arriving in Washington, D.C. On February 10, 1864, Hancock joined the II Corps and served with them at the II Corps Hospital near Brandy Station, Virginia, at the Battle of the Wilderness and the Siege of Petersburg. She worked in the II Corps hospital at the Depot Field Hospital in City Point.
Her popular collection of wartime letters is no longer in print. A commemorative flagstone was placed in her honor at the Alloway Creek Friends Meeting House.
