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Buckel, C. Annette (25 August 1833–17 August 1912), physician, Civil War nurse, and mental health activist, was born Cloe Annette Buckel in Warsaw, New York, the daughter of Thomas Buckel and his wife (given name unknown), whose surname was Bartlett. Both parents died when Buckel, an only child, was three months old. Until the age of four she lived with her grandparents, and after they died she lived with two young aunts, neither of whom exhibited much warmth toward her. By age four Buckel had learned to read and write. Quickly outgrowing the local district school, she moved on to a more advanced one in a neighboring town. At age fourteen she started teaching school, boarding with her students’ parents, both in New York State and in Canada. While a youth she decided to become a physician. Financially unable to immediately begin formal medical school, she worked in a burnishing factory in Connecticut, living with her employer’s family, and studied Latin as she worked. By living simply and borrowing on a life insurance policy she had purchased, Buckel was able to enter the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1856. She later demonstrated the high regard she felt for the school by leaving it a bequest in her will....

Haupt, Alma Cecilia (19 March 1893–15 March 1956), public health nursing leader, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of Charles Edgar Haupt, an Episcopal minister, and Alexandra Dougan. As the young sister of four brothers, Haupt described her childhood as a “tomboy existence tempered with exposure to the cultural and religious life” of her prominent St. Paul family. After completion of secondary education at West High School in St. Paul, she entered the Liberal Arts College at the University of Minnesota in 1911 and graduated four years later with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. After working for a year as a playground instructor in St. Paul and a social worker in Minneapolis, Haupt searched for a career that would provide her with mobility and, consequently, enrolled in the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. Upon graduation in 1919, she accepted a nursing position with the Minneapolis Visiting Nurse Association (MVNA), and within three years she became its nursing superintendent (1922–1924). Years later, Haupt recalled that the MVNA tasks of supervising home care and establishing a public health course for university nursing students were instrumental in directing her lifelong commitment to nursing’s critical role in the public’s health....

Jean, Sally Lucas (18 June 1878–05 July 1971), health educator and nurse, was born in Towson, Maryland, the daughter of George Jean, a teacher, and Emilie Watkins Selby. Her mother was a devout Episcopalian from the South, while her father, who had fought for the northern troops during the Civil War, had been raised in a Presbyterian family. Jean, the youngest of their three children, had two experiences early in life that led her to dream of a nursing career. A close friend died of diphtheria, and shortly after that Jean played Florence Nightingale in a school play. Learning of Nightingale’s life-saving heroics, Jean resolved to follow in her footsteps. When Jean was fifteen her father died and she told her family of her desire to become a nurse. They urged her to become a teacher instead like her father. Obligingly she entered the Maryland State Normal School, from which she graduated in 1896....

Kenny, Elizabeth (20 September 1880–30 November 1952), nurse and developer of a treatment for poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis), nurse and developer of a treatment for poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis), was born in Warialda, New South Wales, Australia, the daughter of Michael Kenny and Mary Moore, homesteaders. Kenny’s family moved frequently during her childhood, and her education was scattered and limited. At the age of eighteen she zealously taught herself the principles of anatomy and muscle function with the help of a surgeon friend, Aeneas John McDonnell, in order to help her brother William strengthen his frail frame through calisthenics....

Richards, Linda (27 July 1841–16 April 1930), nursing leader and pioneer, was born Melinda Ann Judson Richards near Potsdam, New York, the daughter of Sanford Richards and Betsy Sinclair. No information on her early life and education is available. Evangelical religious roots and missionary habits, however, provided foundation, character, and purpose to Richards’s nursing life. As she wrote in her autobiography of 1911, “Quite early in my teens I was called upon for such service … ” In an era that preceded any sort of formal nurses’ training, when minimal hospital sick-care was provided by charwomen, unemployed men, or recovering patients, Richards worked at Boston City Hospital and “learned how little care was given to the sick, how little their groans and restlessness meant to most of the [untrained] nurses … the majority [of whom] were thoughtless, careless, and often heartless.” Determined to reform sick-care, Richards embarked upon her nursing career, which lasted forty years and included superintendencies at myriad institutions: four major hospitals, four smaller ones, four mental institutions (one of which she returned to for a second time), one Visiting Nurse Service, and one foreign school. In addition, she visited three British hospitals and consulted on the founding of other schools, including the first hospital school for nursing the insane in America....