May, at Belle Plain, Fredericksburg, White House, and City
Point, where she labored with great assiduity and success. The changes
in the army organization in June, 1864, removed most of her friends in
the old third corps, and Mrs. McKay, on the invitation of the surgeon in
charge of the cavalry corps hospital, took charge of the special diet of
that hospital, where she remained for nearly a year, finally leaving the
service in March, 1865, and remaining in Virginia in the care and
instruction of the freedmen till late in the spring of 1866. The
officers and men who had been under her care in the Cavalry Corps
Hospital, presented her on Christmas day, 1864, with an elegant gold
badge and chain, with a suitable inscription, as a testimonial of their
gratitude for her services. She had previously received from the
officers of the Seventeenth Maine Volunteers, whom she had cared for
after the battle of Chancellorsville, a magnificent Kearny Cross, with
its motto and an inscription indicating by whom it was presented.

MRS. FANNY L. RICKETTS.

Mrs. Ricketts is the daughter of English parents, though born at
Elizabeth, New Jersey. She is the wife of Major-General Ricketts, United
States Volunteers, who at the time of their marriage was a Captain in
the First Artillery, in the United States Army, and with whom she went
immediately after their union, to his post on the Rio Grande. After a
residence of more than three years on the frontier, the First Artillery
was ordered in the spring of 1861, to Fortress Monroe, and her husband
commenced a school of practice in artillery, for the benefit of the
volunteer artillerymen, who, under his instruction, became expert in
handling the guns.

In the first battle of Bull Run, Captain Ricketts commanded a battery of
light artillery, and was severely, and it was supposed, mortally wounded
and taken prisoner. The heroic wife at once applied for passes to go to
him, and share his captivity, and if need be bring away his dead body.
General Scott granted her such passes as he could give; but with the
Rebels she found more difficulty, her parole being demanded, but on
appeal to General J. E. Johnston, she was supplied with a pass and
guide. She found her husband very low, and suffering from inattention,
but his case was not quite hopeless. It required all her courage to
endure the hardships, privations and cruelties to which the Union women
were, even then, subject, but she schooled h