Monday, June 29, 2015

Anna Morris Ellis Holstein

From: blog.tavbooks.com


Anna Morris Holstein may have been the last person you’d expect to see traveling with soldiers. She and her husband, William H. Holstein, were quite wealthy. But they still had a strong sense of duty. William had served in the Pennsylvania militia during Lee’s 1862 invasion. And when the couple witnessed the carnage at Antietam, they felt called to serve. Anna noted, “we have no right to the comforts of our home, while so many of the noblest of our land renounce theirs.”

The couple enlisted with the US Sanitation Commission. Anna struggled with the grisly realities of war and later admitted that she was of little use till she could gain control of her composure and stop crying. Even after she was more experienced, Anna would succumb to emotion when she received “earnest thanks” from a soldier.

After the war, publisher JB Lippincott capitalized on the hunger for war stories, first with "Hospital Sketches", then less successfully with "Notes of Hospital Life" (1864). Anna’s "Three Years in Field Hospitals of the Army of the Potomac" fit the bill to continue the trend.

Image 1: The Holsteins (center) on site at a field hospital

Image 2: Anna Morris Ellis Holstein

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