“Nurses are there when the last breath is taken, and nurses are there when the first breath is taken. Although it is more enjoyable to celebrate the birth, it is just as important to comfort in death.” —Christine Belle
Throughout its storied history, Wheeling has been blessed with the dedicated service of numerous brave and caring nurses.
Most were trained locally at the nursing schools associated with Wheeling Hospital, and the City Hospital (later Ohio Valley General Hospital and still later Ohio Valley Medical Center), as well as the lesser known and short-lived Haskins Hospital.
In recognition of National Nurses Month and Week, what follows is a sampling of just a few notables among these front line “Angels of the Wards.”
Angel of the Wards – Sister Mary Ignatius Farley, SJ
Sister Ignatius Farley, ca. 1863. Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
The Sisters of St. Joseph first came to Wheeling, at the behest of Bishop Richard Whelan, in 1853, moving to Sweeney Mansion in North Wheeling by 1856 to the site that would become Wheeling Hospital. In 1864, during the Civil War, the Federal Government converted a wing of Wheeling Hospital into a “Post Hospital” and a few months later made the entire institution a general military hospital. The Sisters of St. Joseph were recruited as U.S. Army nurses. During the remainder of the war, the Sisters treated wounded soldiers from both Union and Confederate forces.
The youngest of their number who would go on to distinguish herself as a nurse, was Sister Mary Ignatius Farley, born in Marshall County, Virginia, Dec. 5, 1841, to Irish immigrant farmers, Patrick and Catherine Farley. She was received as a Sister of St. Joseph in 1863.
The stained-glass at the Sacred Heart Church in Pittsburgh. Info on the window from the book “A Sermon in Sculptured Stone and Stained Glass: Sacred Heart Church” reads “Catholic nuns on battlefield during Civil War.” Courtesy Christy Gualtieri.
One night, after her shift on the surgical ward, Sister Ignatius saw several of the other nuns sleeping on the floor of the sacristy using pillows stuffed with leaves. She later learned that the Sisters had “given up their cots and bedclothes to another contingent of wounded soldiers for whom they had found space in one of the corridors.” [See, for example: Coddington, R., Faces of Civil War Nurses. Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020, p. 285].
Along with Mother de Chantal, Sister Ignatius Farley was awarded the Grand Army of the Republic’s Bronze Medal in recognition of their service.
Sister Ignatius Farley, who later served as night superintendent at Wheeling Hospital, died December 4, 1931. She was one day short of 90 years of age.
Her names appears on a Washington, D.C. monument erected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1924 to honor the “Nuns of the Battlefield,” and her likeness is preserved in stained-glass at the Sacred Heart Church in Pittsburgh.
“They comforted the dying, nursed the wounded, carried hope to the imprisoned, gave in His name a drink of water to the thirsty.” -Inscription on “Nuns of the Battlefield” monument.
At First Tap of the Drum for Lincoln’s Call – Lydia Wilson “Mother” Holliday
Mother Lydia Wilson Holliday. Courtesy wvgenweb.org.
Wheeling’s Mrs. Lydia Wilson Holliday was a hero of the American Civil War. “At first tap of the Drum for Lincoln’s call” as she would later write, she volunteered as a nurse at Camp Carlile on Wheeling Island. As more wounded soldiers were brought to Wheeling’s improvised military hospitals like Sprigg House and the Athenaeum, Mrs. Holliday recruited more women to serve as nurses.
At the age of 60, Mrs. Holliday left Wheeling to serve as an army field nurse at both battles of Winchester, Snicker’s Ford, Kernstown, Fisher’s Hill, Opequon, and Cedar Creek. Among the soldiers who witnessed her brave exploits within range of enemy fire, she earned a reputation as a fearless angel of mercy, a renown that would endear her to Union veterans nationwide.
“Mother” Holliday, as she was affectionately known, refused compensation for her services as an army nurse, a fact that would make it difficult for her to collect a pension later in her long life. When she finally did apply at age 90, Dr. John Frissell, assistant U.S. Army surgeon for Wheeling during the war, swore out an affidavit certifying Holliday’s service and stating that she was “the best nurse in Wheeling.”
A bill was introduced to finally secure her pension. It passed just two years before Mother Holliday did. When G.A.R. Commander Robertson visited with the pension voucher, Mother Holliday hesitated, asking him, “Can I get married without losing it?” When he said yes, she replied, “I’m glad of that. For I read in the paper…where a couple were married, the groom being 103 and the bride 102. So you see, there is a good chance for me yet.”
Mother Holliday was reportedly the oldest person in Wheeling when she died on Oct. 5, 1899 at age 97. Though the original funeral plans called for pallbearers to be selected from among her many grandsons and great grandsons, the family agreed to allow six Union veterans to serve instead. Members of the Holliday Post had requested the honor of carrying their beloved Mother Holliday to her final rest. She was, after all, “one of themselves.”
She Gave All – Alice M. Young, U.S. Army Nurse, WWI
U.S. Army and Red Cross Nurse Alice M. Young. Date unknown. Source: www.worldwar1centennial.org
Born August 21, 1877 in New Matamoras, Ohio, Alice M. Young was the daughter of Benjamin F. and Elizabeth Jane (Penn) Young. By the early 1900s, Alice had moved to Wheeling to live with her sister Jessie (Mrs. Dr. Reed McColloch) Baird and family, finding work as a private nurse. She had brothers living in St. Clairsville, Steubenville, Pittsburgh, and Texas at the time.
Alice’s name in the City Hospital graduation ledger. OCPL Archives.
According to the City Hospital Training School for Nurses graduate ledger, now housed in the Ohio County Public Library Archives, she graduated from that institution on May 9, 1901.
Opened in 1892 in conjunction with the City Hospital on the site of the Wheeling Female Seminary (later the Wheeling Female College ), it was the first nursing school in the state of West Virginia. It closed in 1988. On January 14, 1914, City Hospital became the Ohio Valley General Hospital.
Though one source indicates Alice served as a Red Cross nurse (Dock, L. et. al., History of the American Red Cross Nursing, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922, p 1487), at some point after the outbreak of the First World War, Alice had apparently joined the U.S. Army nursing corps and by late 1918 had been assigned to the hospital at Camp Sevier, a National Guard mobilization training camp located in Greenville, South Carolina. [See: Bond, D., A Half Century of Nursing in West Virginia, 1907-1957. Charleston, WV : W. Va. State Nurses Assoc. 1957]
Wheeling Intelligencer, Oct. 5, 1918, p 5.
When the deadly “Spanish Influenza” H1N1 pandemic ravaged U.S. Army training camps that fall, Alice became one of the infected and was deemed “critically ill” in late September 1918. After struggling for about a week, she developed pneumonia and succumbed on October 4, 1918 at age 41. “She was well and favorably known by a large and influential clientele,” the Wheeling Intelligencer reported on Oct. 5, 1918, “and the progress of her last illness was regarded with an interest that was well-nigh universal and was heart-felt.”
Because of the influenza quarantine ordered by state and city health officials, a private funeral was held at her sister’s home at 79-12th Street. Her body was then transported on the B.&O. railroad for internment at New Matamoras Cemetery. Wheeling Intelligencer, Oct. 7, 1918, p. 9.
Engraved on her burial marker is the Latin phrase “Dulce et decorum est – Pro patria mori” which translates “It is sweet and fitting [or honorable] to die for one’s homeland [or country],” a platitude attributed to the Roman poet Horace and debunked as “the old lie” by the poet Wilfred own in his 1921 anti-war poem, “Dulce et Decorum est.”
Alice M. Young is the only female listed among Ohio County’s First World War casualties by the West Virginia Department of Culture and History in their West Virginia Veteran’s Database. Her name can be found engraved on the West Virginia Veteran’s Memorial on the grounds of the state capitol in Charleston.
Nurse Cecilia Coyne, ca. 1950s. Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
Cecilia Catherine Coyne’s long and influential career epitomizes the caring and empathy attributes that have come to characterize the nursing profession. In her 44 years as a nurse, primarily at Wheeling Hospital, she participated in the evolution and development of numerous medical procedures and technologies.
She was born November 11, 1923, in Bridgeport, Ohio, the daughter of Patrick and Mary Cloonan Coyne. She graduated from St. Joseph’s Academy in Wheeling, then worked at Murphy’s Five and Ten Store downtown to pay her way at the Wheeling Hospital School of Nursing, from which she graduated in 1945. Over the course of seven years of night classes, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing Education from Steubenville College in 1954.
Cecilia worked for many years as a registered nurse with Wheeling Hospital, beginning as a staff nurse on the women’s surgical floor in 1945. A year later, she was promoted to head nurse on the men’s surgical unit.
Later promoted to head nurse of Wheeling Hospital’s intensive care unit, Cecilia oversaw the establishment, in 1962, of the first intensive care unit in the state of West Virginia, a 13-bed section featuring an intercom system, oxygen nebulizers, and other medical devices considered innovative at the time (Wheeling Intell., May 12, 1962, p. 9). Cecilia also helped establish the first coronary care unit in Wheeling and in the State of West Virginia in 1966, and founded a nursing in-service education program in 1969.
Nurse Cecilia Coyne, ca. 1950s. Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
“I remember well your conceiving of the idea of the first coronary intensive care ward at 109 Main Street, and what a contribution that was.” -Regina Barberia, MD, in 1981 a letter to Cecilia Coyne
In 1977, as the Director of Nursing In-Service Education at Wheeling Hospital, Cecilia, along with Dora Drake, RN, helped develop the “Pediatric Preview,” a program designed to “relieve youthful fears” for children scheduled to be admitted to the hospital. The children were accompanied by family for tours of hospital room, labs, operating rooms, and the pediatrics department, all to help demystify the process and make it less frightening (Wheeling Intell. Feb. 15, 1977, p. 24).
Respected by her peers statewide, Cecilia was elected President of the West Virginia Nurses Association, serving from 1967-69. Following her 1989 retirement, she volunteered at Wheeling Hospital and was active with the Wheeling Hospital Nurses Alumni Association.
A dedicated parishioner of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Bridgeport, she a member of the Steubenville Council of Catholic Nurses, the Catholic Daughters of America, and the West Virginia Auxiliary of the Congregation of St. Joseph.
Cecilia Catherine Coyne died February 20, 2009 at age 85, and is buried at St. Anthony Cemetery in Blaine, Ohio.
Now housed in the Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston, several artifacts from Cecilia’s nursing career, including a uniform, cape, hats, and several photographs, are on exhibit at the Ohio County Public Library.
We All Bleed the Same – Ann Thomas
Nurse Ann Thomas, 1959
Born in 1938, Beatrice Ann Prince Thomas was the daughter of North Carolina migrants who came to Wheeling during the Great Migration in search of a better life. Ann’s mother worked “out the Pike” for white families as a housekeeper. She often took young Ann with her because, as Ann put it, “She didn’t want me to have to go out the Pike. She wanted me to get an education no one could take away from me.”
Ann grew up during the Jim Crow period of racial segregation, attending Lincoln School. After the Supreme Court’s Brown desegregation decision, Ann left Lincoln, becoming one of the first African American students to graduate from Wheeling High in 1956. After graduation, Ann had a big decision to make. “If you think back,” Ann said, “women were teachers, nurses, or bookkeepers. The professions were not as wide open as they are today.” Ann started working as an aide at the old North Wheeling Hospital. Ann decided to take the nursing school test. “I took the test, but to this day, I don’t know if I passed or not.” The nun who was director of nursing called Ann to her office and asked, “Why would you want to be a nurse? You’re a good nurse’s aide.”
Upset and disappointed, Ann told her parents what happened. Her mother said, “Well, we’ll go to OV (Ohio Valley General Hospital).” When Ann pointed out that there were no black students at OV, her mother replied, “Well maybe you’ll be the first.” Ann enrolled in the hospital’s school of nursing.
Despite many obstacles, in 1959, Ann became the first African American to graduate from the hospital’s school of nursing. Ann said she didn’t think about the historical importance of her groundbreaking achievement while it was happening. “I think maybe that came later…By my doing that there were other African Americans nurses who went there and graduated.”
Although the nursing diploma changed Ann’s life dramatically, the world around her still had changed very little. Ann persevered. Throughout her journey, her inner strength and independent spirit kept her focused and determined to solve problems on her own. She did not rely upon those in authority. For example, Family members of white patient’s sometimes asked Ann to “Go get the nurse.” When this happened Ann took a deep breath, looked them in the eye and calmly stated, “I am the nurse.”
Ann worked at Ohio Valley General Hospital for 12 years, then as an Ohio County school nurse for 30 more beginning in 1971. She started at Clay School and Lincoln School.
“It’s been an interesting life,” Ann reflected. “I think being a nurse—when it gets to the nitty-gritty, we all bleed the same way, we all have the same physical problems, and it has nothing to do with what color or what race someone is. And we are all Americans.”
-All information from the author’s personal interview with Ann Thomas, 2011.
Keeping Patients First – Nurse Eleanor Brzozowski DiProsperis
Nurse Eleanor DiProsperis, 1962.
A 1962 graduate of Wheeling Hospital’s School of Nursing, Eleanor Brzozowski DiProsperis started working on the new Intensive Care Unit with Head Nurse Cecilia Coyne (see above). She worked as an Intensive Care Unit and Cardiac Care Unit staff nurse for 12 years, earning a BSN degree from West Liberty College in the 1970s.
Wheeling Hospital’s Director of Nursing, Sister Christine later asked Eleanor to take over as Head Nurse of Two Center, a large Medical-Surgical Unit.
When the hospital moved from North Wheeling to its current location in 1975, Eleanor was made Head Nurse of the IMU ( Intermediate Care Unit), helping to transition it into a 43-bed telemetry unit (for monitoring cardiac patients), where she cared for acutely ill patients. She served in that capacity for 16 years, meanwhile earning certification in nursing administration from the American Nurses Association.
Eleanor earned a Masters in Nursing degree from West Virginia University in 1987 graduating with her daughter Lisa (BSN), a first for WVU. Eleanor had the honor of serving as flag bearer for the School of Nursing at the graduation ceremony.
After passing the exam, she left IMU to become a Clinical Nurse Specialist at Wheeling Hospital. She was called to all departments whenever a patient’s condition was changing. “I guess I was the one-man Rapid Response Team at that time,” she recalls, with humor. She also worked as Patient Care Coordinator and Supervisor of the Critical Care Areas. Eleanor worked as a CPR instructor and was named volunteer of the year for West Virginia by the American Heart Association.
Having done several mission trips to southern West Virginia to care for uninsured patients, in the late 1990s, Eleanor made several trips to Pignon, Haiti, a poverty-stricken area where people lived in mud huts with no electricity or running water, to help train nurses. “This was my most humbling experience as a nurse,” she recalls.
She was also chosen to travel with other nurses to China in 2000 for the first US-China Nursing Conference, where she lectured through an interpreter on cardiovascular nursing and China and
US shared nursing ideas.
Asked about her favorite memory, Eleanor replied, “I think the most rewarding experience is keeping the patient’s needs first and seeing a patient who was extremely sick get better or knowing that you helped revive a patient whose heart had stopped.”
Her worst memories were associated with the flood at the new hospital building in 1975. “When you knew that your patients lives lay in the balance and you were responsible for 43 patients, making the rounds to each, giving reports to doctors for each, making decisions to transfer the patient or send them home. Just carrying patients down steps was frightening during the flood. These were monumental decisions. But all patients were triaged correctly and a difficult situation turned out well.”
Her last title was Director of Clinical Peer Review.
Nurse Eleanor Brzozowski DiProsperis worked her entire 47 year career at Wheeling Hospital, retiring in 2009.
-All information from the author’s personal interview with Eleanor Brzozowski DiProsperis, May 2021.
The Happiest Floor – Labor and Delivery Nurse Mary Anne Duffy
Nurse Mary Anne Duffy, 1962.
Mary Anne Duffy graduated from Wheeling Hospital’s School of Nursing on June 17, 1962. She started the following Monday at Wheeling Hospital in North Wheeling on the Labor and Delivery floor, where she would work for the next 45 years. During her long career, Mary Anne attended deliveries of (or delivered essentially on her own) countless thousands of babies. To this day, she is regularly recognized in public by mothers for whom she provided care.
Mary Anne is thankful to have had a career doing one of the happiest nursing jobs, and cherishes her memories of joyful parents getting excited when they saw their babies. “We all cried tears of joy,” she recalls. Of course, not all the days were happy. Some deliveries were difficult, and some babies were stillborn. The biggest challenge of her career came when the hospital had 24 babies delivered in one 24-hour period, 6 of which were Caesarian sections. “We had mothers in the hallways with monitors,” Mary Anne recalled. “We had to work non-stop to take care of all of them. Everyone had to work over and we had to call in more nurses.”
Mary Anne retired from nursing in 2007, but continues to volunteer at Wheeling Hospital.
-All information from the author’s personal interview with Mary Anne Duffy, May 2021.
Haskins Hospital Nurses
Founded in 1886 by Thomas M. Haskins, M. D., the 25-bed Haskins Hospital was located at 3327 to 3333 Eoff Street. An Annex was added to the building in 1900, which allowed room for parlors, a Turkish bath with massage artist, a fully stocked drug store, operating rooms (including a marble one), four large wards, a library, a horse-drawn ambulance, and a nursing school (above: nurses in class for a lecture by Dr. Gilmore).
After 29 years of business, Haskins Hospital closed June 1, 1915. -OCPL Archives.
Nurses Month Exhibit
Now housed in the Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston, several artifacts from Cecilia Coyne’s nursing career, including a uniform, cape, hats, and several photographs, are on exhibit at the Ohio County Public Library.
Do you recognize any of these people? These are all historic photos of Wheeling people, places, and things that need to be identified. Weelunk, Archiving Wheeling, and the Ohio County Public Library Archives have teamed up to reach out to Wheeling area residents or people that have lived in the Wheeling area at any time—we need your help identifying the individuals in these photos.
This is an ongoing monthly project to connect today’s Wheeling community to its historical resources and stories. In honor of National Nurses Month, our May History Mystery selections feature nurses from the Ohio Valley Medical Center and Wheeling Hospital.
Nurses and nursing students in front of bulletin board featuring the Nightingale Pledge, Ohio Valley General Hospital, 1960s (OCPL Archives – Ohio Valley Medical Center School of Nursing collection)
The Ohio Valley Medical Center School of Nursing collection includes artifacts and documents that were used in the historical displays at the hospital, such as brochures, photographs, medical equipment, yearbooks, awards and other material. Many of the photographs correspond to those featured in the yearbooks, but many are unidentified. Can you help us identify these students? Email us.
In celebration of National Nurses Week (and Month), and in honor of those on the front lines, we will be joined, live from the U.K. by Dr. Christine Hallett, Ph.D., a Registered Nurse and the Director of the Center for the History of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Manchester, U.K. She also holds fellowships with the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society for the Arts, U.K.
Dr. Hallett is the author of the book, Celebrating Nurses: A Visual History, a refreshing narrative history of nursing featuring dramatic, highly readable illustrated stories of nursing’s pioneering, often heroic leaders.
The presentation will begin with a tribute to the Nurses of Wheeling.
Seán Patrick Duffy is the programming coordinator at the Ohio County Public Library and the Executive Director of the Wheeling Academy of Law and Science (WALS) Foundation at the First State Capitol in Wheeling, where he manages the Reuther-Wheeling Library and Labor History Archive. He earned a BA in History and an MBA from Wheeling Jesuit University, and a JD from the American University. He is the author of three books on local history: The Wheeling Family: A Celebration of Immigrants & Their Neighborhoods (2008), Wheeling: Then & Now with Paul Rinkes (2010), and The Wheeling Family, Volume 2: More Immigrants, Migrants & Neighborhoods (2012). He also edited and co-authored Legendary Locals of Wheeling (2013) with Brent Carney and numerous local contributors. Seán was named a History Hero by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History in 2010 and is a member of the West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation Board.
