Mary A. Gardner Holland, also known as Mary G. Holland, was a Union nurse during the American Civil War.[1]
In 1897, more than thirty years after the war, Holland compiled accounts from numerous Civil War nurses into her book Our Army Nurses: Stories from Women in the Civil War.[2] [3] [4] The book begins with an introduction by Holland herself; she writes "what more fitting place for women with holy motives and tenderest sympathy than on those fields of blood and death or in retreats prepared for our suffering heroes?"[5]
According to Holland's account, she worked in hospitals for about fourteen months. She would have enlisted earlier, she writes, if she didn't have an aging mother depending upon her.[6] Ultimately, Holland cared for her mother during the day then worked with the Sanitary Commission on weekday evenings until Holland wrote to Dorothea Dix asking to be recruited.[7] Holland was stationed at Columbia College Hospital in Meridian Heights, a suburb of Washington, D.C. From there she went to West Washington and then to Annapolis, serving as a matron.[1]