Existing comment:
Clarina Howard Nichols, Feminist and Copyist at the Quartermaster Department:
Clarina Nichols and her daughter, Birsha Davis, could be viewed as the prototypes of the federal government's first female clerks. They were white, well-educated, from a genteel family, and in financial distress because of the Civil War.
In 1854, Nichols and her family moved from Vermont to Kansas as part of a group of anti-slavery immigrants. During the Civil War, she and her daughter sought employment in Washington. Birsha, who had been a teacher in Kansas, took a job as a copyist in the Internal Revenue Office of the Treasury Department in 1862. In 1863, Nichols followed her daughter to Washington for a position as copyist in the Quartermaster's Department.
In February 1865, Nichols left her job at the Quartermaster Department to be matron at the Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in Georgetown. When Clarina Nichols arrived, she found the orphans in a deplorable situation. Under her management, conditions at the home improved considerably. |