Rebecca Lane Pennypacker Price

Rebecca Lane Pennypacker Price (September 8, 1837 – May 17, 1919) was a nurse who served in the American Civil War, and was the penultimate president of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War in 1914.

Rebecca Lane Pennypacker during the American Civil War, from a 1914 publication.
Rebecca L. Price, from a 1914 publication.

Early life

Rebecca Lane Pennypacker was born in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Mathias Showalter Pennypacker and Elizabeth Buckwalter Pennypacker. Her mother was a hospital matron during the American Civil War. Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker was her first cousin; General Galusha Pennypacker was another cousin.[1]

Career

Rebecca L. Price was a leader of the Phoenixville Union Relief Society at the beginning the American Civil War, organizing sewists and knitters, running donation drives, and delivering supplies to troops. She was given a travel pass by Pennsylvania's governor Andrew Gregg Curtin to facilitate her work. She volunteered as a nurse at hospitals in Virginia, Baltimore and Philadelphia. She rode a cattle car to offer compassionate care to badly wounded soldiers, and replenish clothing, bandages, food, and other provisions, after the Battle of Gettysburg.[2]

Later in life, Price was a manager of the Baptist Institute for Christian Workers in Philadelphia. She remained active with the Civil War nursing organizations, and in 1914 and 1915 was the president of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War.[3] As president, she spoke to a gathering of Civil War veterans on the 50th anniversary of the war's end in 1915, saying "We can do much to lead the rising generation to see horrors of war rather than its glories that they may give their lives to preserve these blessings through peace. Peace is what we want, and not war."[4]

Personal life

Rebecca Lane Pennypacker married Edwin Price in 1859. They had two children, a son, George E. Price (1874-1951), and a daughter, Cora Price (later Bowen) (1869-1961). Rebecca L. Price was widowed in 1914 and died in 1919, aged 81 years, at her home in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.[5]

In 2015 the Phoenixville Historical Society marked Armed Forces Day with an event honoring Rebecca Lane Pennypacker Price's contributions as a nurse in the American Civil War.[6][7]

References
  1. "Old Member of Pennypacker Family was Civil War Nurse" Harrisburg Telegraph (July 3, 1917): 2. via Newspapers.com
  2. Frank Otto, "Phoenixville woman traveled to Gettysburg to tend to wounded" The Mercury (June 3, 2013).
  3. "Nurses of the Past" Trained Nurse and Hospital Review (November 1914): 287.
  4. Rebecca L. Price remarks, Journal of the 49th National Encampment of the G.A.R. at Washington, D.C., 1915 (Government Printing Office 1916): 217.
  5. "Woman Who Served as Civil War Nurse Dies at Pottsdown" Harrisburg Telegraph (May 31, 1919): 2.
  6. "Armed Forces Day Event, Honoring Civil War Nurse Rebecca Lane Pennypacker Price" Phoenixville Regional Chamber of Commerce (May 16, 2015).
  7. Eric Devlin, "Phoenixville Civil War Nurse to be Honored at Ceremony" The Mercury (May 13, 2015).
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