Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke was a woman of great prestige during the Civil War. She set up army hospitals for the Union forces and traveled with the army improving conditions wherever she went. Both General Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were impressed by her devotion and talent, and the entire Union army benefited from her efforts.

Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke was born on July 19, 1817, in Knox County, Ohio. Her mother passed away in 1818 when Bickerdyke was only one year old. After that she and her siblings were sent to live on their grandparents' farm in Richland County, Ohio.

Little is known about the rest of Bickerdyke's young life. She may have gone to nursing school at Oberlin College, and she may have helped care for the victims of the cholera epidemics that ravaged Cincinnati in both 1837 and 1849.

In 1847 Mary Ann Ball married Robert Bickerdyke who was...