tillery, was then
at Cairo, where he had been ordered to labor in hospitals; and Mrs.
Porter, visiting Cairo and Paducah, entered earnestly into the work of
placing the nurses she had brought with her from Chicago. Some of these
devoted themselves constantly to the service, and proved equally
successful and valuable.

At Cairo, Mrs. Porter made the acquaintance of Miss Mary J. Safford,
since known as the "Cairo Angel," and co-operating with her there, and
with Mr. Porter and various surgeons and philanthropists, aided in
receiving, and temporarily caring for seven hundred men from the field
of Pittsburgh Landing, and in transferring them to the hospitals of
Mound City, Illinois.

From four o'clock in the morning until ten at night, Mrs. Porter and her
friends labored, and then, their work accomplished and their suffering
charges made as comfortable as circumstances would permit, they were
forced, by the absence of hotel accommodations, to spend the night
upon the steamer where the state-rooms being occupied, they slept upon
chairs.

Soon afterward she went, accompanied by Miss Safford, to Pittsburgh
Landing. There she obtained from the Medical Director, Dr. Charles
McDougal, an order for several female nurses for his department. She
hastened to Chicago, secured them, and accompanying them to Tennessee
placed them at Savannah with Mrs. Mary Bickerdyke, who had been with the
wounded since the battle of Shiloh. From thence she went to Corinth,
then just taken by General Grant. She was accompanied by several
benevolent ladies from Chicago, like herself bent on doing good to the
sick and wounded. At Corinth she joined her husband, and he being
ordered to join his regiment at Memphis, she went thither in his
company.

Here, principally in the hospital of the First Light Artillery at Fort
Pickering, she labored through the summer of 1862, and afterwards
returned to visit some of the southern towns of Illinois in search of
stores from the farmers, which she added to the supplies forwarded by
the Commission.

While at Memphis, Mrs. Porter became deeply interested in the welfare
of the escaped slaves and their families congregated there.

Receiving aid from friends at the North, she organized a school for
them, and spent all her leisure hours in giving them instruction. One of
the nurses she had brought thither desired to aid in the work, and
obtaining needful books and charts she organized a school for Miss
Humphrey at