Recognition at Last for BU Alumna Almira Fifield, MD ’1859, Civil War Physician
In her own time, Almira Fifield, MD, New England Female Medical College (NEFMC) Class of 1859, was praised for her dutiful and skillful tending to sick and wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, and for her sacrifice, dying at age 29 from an illness caught while working at a Kentucky hospital.
News of her death was published in the Chicago Tribune, in her local newspaper in Valparaiso, Indiana, and other Indiana newspapers; her name appeared in publications in Europe alongside other well-known women physicians of the time.
But time erased nearly all traces of Fifield, and she lies buried in an unmarked grave in Valparaiso. Barbara Fifield Brandt, PhD, EdM, founding director of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education in Minnesota, would like to change that.
Two years ago, Brandt came across a family history that mentioned that a Fifield had graduated from New England Female Medical College, which was later taken over by Boston University, had died in the Civil War while caring for Union soldiers and was buried in the Valparaiso cemetery. Brandt determined it was Almira Fifield, who was born in New Hampshire in 1833 and was connected to her through her father’s family.
Brandt felt a deep obligation to advocate for a headstone to give Fifield the recognition she was due as a human being and as a doctor who died in service to her country. In large part due to her historical sleuthing, the Indiana Historical Bureau recently approved a historical marker for Fifield in Valparaiso with a dedication ceremony and symposium in spring of 2025. Brandt’s request for a Civil War marker and headstone is under review at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Fifields moved from Enfield, New Hampshire, to Canada, then into Porter County, Indiana. Brandt found that her grandfather inherited the family land in Porter County. But both of her father’s parents were dead by the time he was 12 and family history and stories weren’t passed along.
“We knew nothing of this story,” said Brandt. The historical records, including archives at BU Medical Campus Alumni Medical Library, revealed that Fifield started out as a schoolteacher, but for unknown reasons, at age 26, decided to become a physician.
Fifield’s decision to travel across the country to attend medical school was a highly unusual move at the time. Brandt found that Fifield was one of only six of the 98 NEFMC graduates between 1848 and 1874 who weren’t from New England or New York. She theorized there may have been a religious and abolitionist connection between the Fifields and NEFMC.
Newspaper articles revealed that Fifield intended to return to Valparaiso following her graduation to practice medicine, but there is no evidence she did. It may have been abolitionist leanings or that her brother, Zacheus Barnum Fifield, had recently been wounded while fighting with the Union army, but soon after her return home she started campaigning to use her medical degree and skills to treat Union soldiers. U.S. Representative from Indiana and 17th Vice President of the United States Schuyler Colfax, who led the drive for a Constitutional amendment that abolished slavery, wrote a letter on her behalf to Dorothea Dix, superintendent of nurses for the Union Army.
“I add my testimony to that of her other friends, knowing her to be capable, zealous, worthy, robust, & has a withal good knowledge of medicine,” Colfax wrote.
Prejudice from male physicians and public sentiment were aligned against the 222 female physicians in the U.S. at the time. Although 21,000 women volunteered as nurses, laundresses and cooks, only 19 female physicians were allowed to treat soldiers during the war. Just one, Mary Walker who won the Medal of Honor for her service, was officially listed as a doctor.
According to an article published soon after her death, Fifield was told to “bury in silence her medical education and her degree,” and agreed to serve as a nurse. She proved so valuable and skillful that she was put in charge of a surgical ward at the Union Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky.
Life was not easy for patients and staff in a Civil War hospital. Between 1861 and 1865, approximately 620,000 soldiers on both sides died, roughly equivalent to the total number of American combat fatalities from the Revolutionary War through the Korean War. Medicine at the time did not address germs and didn’t include the use of sterile dressings, antiseptic surgery, or sanitation and hygiene. Infectious diseases, like typhoid and dysentery, killed nearly 225,000 on the Union side alone.
In 1863, at 29, after only a year on the job, Fifield succumbed to “congestive chills,” likely tuberculosis or typhus, and was buried in the cemetary where her father, his three wives and other relatives would eventually be interred. An article in the Valparaiso newspaper called her a fallen martyr and praised her “skillful and continuous labors for the sick and wounded in different hospitals for many months, from all whose surgeons she received testimonials of the highest character.”
In 1890, the U.S. Senate voted to give a pension to her father in recognition of her service.
Last year, Brandt traveled to the cemetery, which is locked and off limits to the public, due to vandalism that destroyed many of the gravestones of the early families of Valparaiso and Porter County.
“It was quite emotional for me,” she said. Although some headstones remained, many were toppled or missing.
The Valparaiso genealogy center records showed that 42 Civil War Veterans were buried there, including Fifield and two other nurses. Their presence was documented by the Grand Army of the Republic which, for a time, placed wreaths on the graves annually.
Brandt is hoping that soon she will return to the cemetery and see Fifield honored in a way befitting her service and sacrifice.
“What I’m fighting for now is to have the MD included on her Civil War marker,” said Brandt.