ning of the 20th. But death overtook her before even this
portion of the journey was finished. She died upon the passage, on the
afternoon of July 20th, 1863. After her life of usefulness and devotion,
her name at last stands high upon the roll of martyr-women, whom this
war has made.
MARIA R. MANN.
Among the heroic women who labored most efficiently and courageously
during the late civil war for the good of our soldiers, and the poor
"contrabands," as the freed people were called, was Miss Maria R. Mann,
an educated and refined woman from Massachusetts, a near relative of the
first Secretary of the Board of Education of that renowned Commonwealth,
who gave his life and all his great powers to the cause of education,
and finished his noble career as the President of Antioch College, in
Ohio.
Miss Mann, is a native of Massachusetts, and spent the greater portion
of her mature life previous to the war, as a teacher. In this, her
chosen profession, she attained a high position, and for a number of
years taught in the High Schools. As a teacher she was highly esteemed
for her varied and accurate knowledge, the care and minuteness with
which she imparted instruction to her pupils, the high moral and
religious principle which controlled her actions, and made her life an
example of truth and goodness to her pupils, and for her enthusiastic
interest in the cause of education, of freedom and justice for the
slave, and of philanthropy and humanity towards the orphan, the
prisoner, the outcast, the oppressed and the poor, to whom her heart
went out in kindly sympathies, and in prayer and effort for the
improvement of their condition.
During the first year of the rebellion, she left all her pleasant
associations in New England, and came out to St. Louis, that she might
be nearer to the scene of conflict, and aid in the work of the Western
Sanitary Commission, and in nursing the sick and wounded soldiers, with
whom the hospitals at St. Louis were crowded that year. On her arrival,
she was duly commissioned by Mr. Yeatman, (the agent of Miss Dix for the
employment of women nurses), and entered upon her duties in the Fifth
Street Hospital.
For several months, she devoted herself to this work with great fidelity
and patience, and won the gratitude of many a poor sufferer by her
kindness, and the respect of the surgeons, by her good judgment and her
blended gentleness and womanly dignity.
Late in the fall of 1862,
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