Aunt Lizzie Aiken

She was a famous nurse from Peoria, Illinois. A young widow in 1861, she showed up at the headquarters of the Sixth Illinois Calvary, also known and "The Governor Yates Legion". She reported to the head surgeon, Major Niglos, to offer her assistance taking care of the wounded, building morale and doing the hard jobs that even then defined nursing. She also did missionary work, read the Bible to the soldiers, and wrote or read letter for them. Originally she worked without pay, and without a military rank as a volunteer. In 1862 she entered military service at the rate of $12.00 per month, when it was paid. Because of her kindness, the soldiers called her "Aunt Lizzie".

Aunt Lizzie was asked to go to Cairo, but ignoring her own safety she went to Shawneetown, Illinois. In the severe winter of a861-1862, along with one other woman, she took care of twenty to eighty patients each day, each nurse working two six hour shifts daily. In January 1862 both General Ulysses S. Grant and General William T. Sherman visited her to congratulate her for saving the lives of four hundred men.

Aunt Lizzie's birth name was Eliza N. Atherton, and she was born March 24, 1817 in Auburn, New York. In 1837, when she was twenty years old, she married Cyrus Aiken of Vermont. They honeymooned in Boston, then, traveling by stage and flat boat, went to Chicago in the hope of settling on the Rock River at Grand DeTour, Illinois. In her early years in Illinois she lost her three sons and a sister to cholera and had her husband incapacitated by the disease, eventually causing the loss of their home. At the start of the Civil War she nursed and performed missionary duties among the soldiers in Peoria.

She moved with the regiment to Paducah, Kentucky at St. Mark's Hospital with "Mother Sturgis", the wife of another officer. Finally, when the Sixth Illinois Calvary went further south into Confederate territory, Lizzie and Mother Sturgis were left to do general nursing work for Union Soldiers at Ovington Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and were no longer assigned to just one Illinois regiment. Before the war the Ovington had be the finest hotel in Memphis, but was a hospital run by six Roman Catholic Sisters of the Holy Cross and six Protestant nurses. Aunt Lizzie was in charge of Ward A, with one hundred sick and wounded men. Both armies lost more men to disease and delayed treatment of wounds than to gunfire. She received a note one day that six hundred sick and wounded had arrived at Jefferson Hospital, one of which was her brother Bertrand. She rushed to find him, but could not recognize him, even after he saw her and exclaimed how much she looked like their mother. She took her brother to an other brother in St. Louis, who then took him home to Hoyleton, Illinois.

In February 1864 fifteen thousand Calvary soldiers from the north left Memphis to a march on Mississippi, led by the Sixth Illinois. Hundreds of soldiers came by the hospital to see her and ask her to stay in Memphis so if they were wounded she could care for them. By this time Lizzie's own health was declining and she was sent to another hospital.

In June 1865 after the end of the Civil War, Mother Sturgis helped Lizzie get back to Peoria. Later in the year Lizzie went to Chicago to stay with an friend and recuperate. Since she still needed to support herself she applied for several jobs, including one with a newspaper. For about a year she worked for a refuge for men set up by the YMCA. While one editor turned her down for a job he referred her to the wife of a Baptist pastor who steered Lizzie back to missionary work. Baptist churches were very active in Chicago in the late 1800s and Lizzie took on the job of raising money and setting up a board for the University of Chicago in 1892.

Lizzie became a missionary at the Second Baptist Church of Chicago in 1867 and made as many as 12,000 visits to the ill in 12 years. She remained with the Second Baptist Church until her death 38 years later on January 16, 1906 at the age of 88. Her career in Chicago was almost as well known as her work during the Civil War.

There were many other tributes to Lizzie's life and work from the press in 1906, including this one from The Christian Herald:

"There died recently, in the City of Chicago, a woman whose career was so remarkable for its heroic self sacrifice and dauntless courage, that she could be ranked as high as the bravest soldier who does battle for his country. Her name was, Mrs. Eliza A. Aiken, but perhaps this would have an unfamiliar sound to the grizzled veterans; but say 'Aunt Lizzie' the angel of the hospitals of Memphis and Paducah, and they would raise their hands to the salute, out of respect and love to America's Florence Nightingale."

The following are the rules Aunt Lizzie drew up for herself at the beginning of her work:

"I am resolved that, I will never, either in the morning or evening, proceed to any work, until I have first retired, at least for a few moments, to a private place and implored God for His assistance and blessings."

"I will neither do, nor undertake anything which I would abstain from doing if Jesus Christ were standing visibly at my side; nor anything of which I think it is possible that I shall repent in the uncertain hour of my death."

"I will, with God's help, accustom myself to do everything without exception, in the name of Jesus, and his Disciple, to sigh unto God continually, keeping myself in a constant disposition for prayer."

"Wherever I go, I will first pray to God that I may commit no sin there, but may cause some good."

"I will every evening, examine my conduct by these rules."

"Oh, God, thou seest what I have written. May I be able to read these, my resolutions, every morning with sincerity and every evening with joy."