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Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke
1807 - 1901
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the members of the Brick Congregational Church began collecting supplies for the soldiers in Cairo, Illinois. Mary Ann had medical training and was asked to accompany the supplies to Cairo. Upon arrival she found the sanitary conditions of the camp deplorable. By November 1861 she managed to have a real hospital built and was placed in charge of dispensing supplies and laundry. One arrogant surgeon questioned her right to be present in the operating room and she responded, “I am present on the authority of Lord God Almighty, have you anything that outranks that?” The surgeon did not respond. Soon she was given the nickname of “Cyclone in Calico.” One doctor said that a two-legged cyclone in a skirt hit the Federal base of Illinois. The soldiers referred to her as “Mother Bickerdyke” a nickname given to her by Andrew Somerville, a young soldier from Iowa.
General Grant issued her a pass to travel anywhere in his line of order. In Memphis, Tennessee a surgeon complained to General Sherman about an old woman, Mrs. Bickerdyke. “Oh well then, if it was she, I can’t help you. She has more power than I … she ranks me!” replied General Sherman. He allowed no other woman in his camps. “Mother Bickerdyke” traveled with Sherman through nineteen campaigns.
At the end of the war “Mother Bickerdyke” refused to leave her boys until the last one was discharged in March 1866. After the war she continued her work with the needy at Chicago’s Home for the Friendless.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke was born 19 July 1817 in Knox County, Ohio to Hiriam Ball and Annie Rodgers. She married Robert Bickerdyke in 1847 and died in 1901 at Kansas. She is buried beside her husband in Linwood Cemetery at Galesburg, Illinois.
Photos taken by Fran Henley
Rebecca D. Larson, White Roses
Nina Brown Baker, Cyclone in Calico
Robert P. Broadwater, Daughters of the Cause
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