“I can be transcribing a page from left to right when I read the fate as ‘died.’ I think we all stop for a second and mourn that soldier.” “We all feel a connection to the patients,” she says. “Or did he have a bad case of diarrhea and was moping around?”įor Hemphill, the names are more than statistics.
“Was that post-traumatic stress?” he wonders. Gorman recalls one soldier who was afflicted by “melancholia.” The ledgers offer details of what brought the soldiers to Chimborazo, whether battlefield injury or disease - the biggest killer in 19th-century warfare.īesides the challenge of deciphering harried handwriting, terminology can sometimes provide little to go on. Despite this, many medical advances and discoveries occurred as a result of the work of dedicated physicians on both sides of the conflict. This is about data that will yield definitive information - for example, how many soldiers arrived at Chimborazo from Henrico County or Atlanta. National Park ranger and historian Mike Gorman takes on these endeavors with the enthusiasm of a diver seeking deep-sea treasure. The microfilm can obscure names in the gutter of the ledgers, and the clerks, using pens dipped in ink, sometimes misspelled names or wrote in illegible script. The sheer number of entries, and the difficulty of deciphering the clerical cursive from National Archives microfilm, make the task daunting.
The project began in May 2018, and the work is done by volunteers at home. From October 1861 to April 1865, the hospital received 77,000 Confederate injured and ailing. Today, the hospital is the site of a Richmond National Battlefield Park Visitor Center and the Chimborazo Medical Museum, and Hemphill is a volunteer with the Chimborazo Patient Project, an ongoing initiative to decipher the ledgers that recorded the names of soldiers convalescing there. Jean Hemphill’s great-great-grandfathers served in the Confederate Army, and one died at Chimborazo Hospital. Maryland Stacks E468.7.O55 2014.A page from a patient ledger at Chimborazo Hospital recorded during the Civil War (Image courtesy Richmond National Battlefield Park) Annapolis: Friends of the Maryland State Archives, 2014. “I am Busy Drawing Pictures:" The Civil War Art and Letters of Private John Jacob Omenhausser, CSA. Available via Digital Collections at the following link: The vast majority of these men were treated in hospitals scattered throughout both sections of the country. Maryland Manuscripts Collection MDMS 1513. Everyday Life in a Civil War Hospital By Paige Gibbons Backus Octo Updated MaLibrary of Congress Over the course of the Civil War, at least 600,000 soldiers died from wounds or sickness.
CIVIL WAR HOSPITAL RECORDS SERIES
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