Recognition at Last for BU Alum and Civil War Physician Almira Fifield, MD
In her 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—she died in 1863 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, and 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, aims to rectify that.
Two years ago, Brandt learned that a Fifield had graduated from New England Female Medical College (which later became part of Boston University), had died in the Civil War while caring for Union soldiers, and was buried in the Valparaiso cemetery. Brandt determined that this person was Almira Fifield, who was born in New Hampshire in 1833 and related to her through her father’s family.
Brandt felt deeply obligated 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. Due in large part to her sleuthing, the Indiana Historical Bureau recently approved a historical marker for Fifield in Valparaiso. Brandt’s request for a Civil War marker and headstone is under review at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Fifields moved from Enfield, New Hampshire, to Canada, then to Porter County, Indiana, to land inherited by Brandt’s paternal grandfather.
Historical records, including archives at the Medical Campus Alumni Medical Library, revealed that Fifield started out as a schoolteacher, but decided to become a physician at age 26.
At the time, her decision to travel across the country to attend medical school was a highly unusual one. 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, and theorizes that there may have been a religious and abolitionist connection between the Fifields and NEFMC.
Perhaps because her brother, Zacheus Barnum Fifield, had recently been wounded while fighting with the Union Army—or perhaps due to her own abolitionist leanings—soon after her return home, she started campaigning to use her medical degree and skills to treat Union soldiers. US Representative from Indiana and 17th Vice President of the United States Schuyler Colfax, who led the drive for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, wrote a letter on Fifield’s 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.
Both prejudice from male physicians and public sentiment were aligned against the 222 female physicians in the US 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. Mary Walker, who won the Medal of Honor for her service, was the only woman 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, proving herself so valuable and skillful that she was put in charge of a surgical ward at the Union Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky.
Life was extremely difficult for patients and staff in Civil War hospitals. Medicine at the time did not address germs or include the use of sterile dressings, antiseptic surgery, or sanitation and hygiene. Infectious diseases, like typhoid and dysentery, took nearly 225,000 lives on the Union side alone.
After only a year on the job, Fifield succumbed to “congestive chills,” likely tuberculosis or typhus, and was buried in the cemetery where her father, his three wives, and other relatives would eventually be interred. An article in the Valparaiso newspaper called Fifield 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.”
Last year, Brandt traveled to the cemetery, which is locked and closed to the public due to vandalism. Although some headstones remained, many were toppled or missing. “It was quite emotional for me,” she recalls.
The Valparaiso genealogy center records showed that 42 Civil War veterans were buried there, including Fifield and two other nurses.
Brandt hopes she soon will return to the cemetery to see Fifield honored in a manner befitting her service and sacrifice. “What I’m fighting for now,” she says, “is to have the MD included on her Civil War marker.”