Existing comment:
1776: Women begin working with the Army as nurses, laundresses, and spies.
1778: Deborah Sampson joins the Continental Army.
1812: Mary Marshall and Mary Allen serve as nurses on board Stephen Decatur's flagship.
1854 ??: Ida Lewis began caring for Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island in 1854 after her father became too ill to continue work. She proved a skilled life-saver, reportedly rescuing 24 people during her 19-year career. Lighthouse keepers are often considered early members of the Coast Guard, making Ida Lewis one of the earliest sea service women.
1861: Disguised women begin enlisting in the Union and Confederate Armies.
1862: Women begin serving as nurses on board the USS Red Rover, the first hospital ship.
1865: Dr. Mary Edwards Walker becomes the first, and only, woman to receive the Medal of Honor.
1898: Civilian contract nurses work in Army hospitals during the Spanish American War.
1901: Army Nurse Corps established.
1901 ??: The Navy Nurse Corps, based on the Army Nurse Corps, was founded in 1908, giving women their first official place in the Navy. The first twenty nurses, nicknamed the "Sacred Twenty," led Navy nurses for more than two decades.
1912: The Navy Nurse Corps opens training hospitals on Guam.
1917: Women begin serving as Navy clerks during World War I to free sailors to go to Europe. They were called Yeomen (F). The "F" standing for "female," after a gender-blind selection process accidentally assigned some women to ships. Almost 13,000 women served as Yeomen (F) during the war, some came back to lead female reservists during World War II. |