OUR ASSOCIATE MEMBERS

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS of the 17th Corps Field Hospital:



ROBERT KARCZEWSKI PORTRAYING: Major A. J. Ward - Medical Officer Corps Hospital

Major A. J. Ward was the Medical Officer in Charge of the Corps Hospitals for the 1st Corps Army of the Potomac on July 2, 1863 near White Church road and the Baltimore Pike. In his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Corps Hospital, 2,379 wounded were cared for under the three division hospital teams.
Major Ward is under temporary assignment to the 17th Corps Field Hospital
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SCOTT PAULSON PORTRAYING: Embalming Surgeon - Undertaker 17th Corps

During the early part of the Civil War it was the Embalming Surgeons that performed the embalming procedure. Many of the men were military surgeons. Toward the latter part of the War there were reports of a few undertakers beginning to embalm both at home and on the field of battle. Of the tens upon tens of embalming surgeons practicing during the War years, very few are heard of following the War. It is then that the undertaker begins to see the potential and the obvious extension of embalming into the undertaking profession. Many of the Surgeons, after their war experiences, never practiced medicine upon their return home. Surgeon of the 8th Illinois Cavalry, Dr. Abner Hard of Aurora, Illinois, only practiced embalming after the war. The embalming surgeon was a Northern phenomenon. Dr. Paulson is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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LORI TILLA-MEEKER POTRAYING: Dr. Mary Walker - Contract Surgeon

She was born in the Town of Oswego, New York, on November 26, 1832. As a young woman, she taught at the school to earn enough money to pay her way through Syracuse Medical College (now Upstate Medical University), where she graduated as a medical doctor in 1855 as the only woman in her class. She married a fellow medical school student, Albert Miller, and they set up a joint practice in Rome, New York. The practice did not flourish, as female physicians were generally not trusted or respected at that time.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, she volunteered for the Union Army as a civilian. At first, she was only allowed to practice as a nurse, as the Army had no female surgeons. During this period, she served at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), July 21, 1861 and at the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, D.C. She worked as an unpaid field surgeon near the Union front lines, including the Battle of Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga. Finally, she employed as a "Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)" by the Army of the Cumberland in September 1863, becoming the first-ever female surgeon employed by the U.S. Army Surgeon.

Walker was later appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this service, she frequently crossed battle lines, treating civilians. On April 10, 1864 she was captured by Confederate troops and arrested as a spy, just after she finished helping a confederate doctor perform an amputation. She was sent to Richmond, Virginia and remained there until August 12, 1864 when she was released as part of a prisoner exchange. She went on to serve during the Battle of Atlanta and later as supervisor of a female prison in Louisville, Kentucky, and head of an orphanage in Tennessee.
(based upon archives)