CARRIE ELIZA CUTTER – THE “FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE OF THE 21ST MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.
CARRIE ELIZA CUTTER – THE “FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE OF THE 21ST MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY.
Born in Milford, New Hampshire, Carrie Eiza Cutter was the daughter of the 21st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Surgeon Dr. Calvin Cutter, a staunch abolitionist who had been active in Kansas prior to the Civil War. Her formal education was at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and a private German school in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the profession of her father, she joined the war effort through becoming a nurse or “hospital matron” on the Burnside expedition to North Carolina. After a perilous journey through a winter gale off Cape Hatteras, on the “Steamer Northerner”, Cutter and her father arrived in time to witness the Battle of Roanoke Island, on February 8th.
"During the battle, Cutter found herself caring for a young man that she knew from home—he had actually lived with her father’s family since 1860. Charles Plummer Tidd had accompanied Dr. Cutter to Kansas prior to the war, and there he had joined John Brown’s army of abolitionists. After Brown’s unsuccessful raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, Tidd had escaped capture and changed his name. The Cutter family provided a refuge for him in Massachusetts. When the Civil War began, he enlisted along with Dr. Cutter in the 21st Massachusetts. Tidd never saw action in battle, as he contracted typhoid fever while onboard the”Steamer Northerner”. Cutter nursed him but he died on February 8th as the battle raged onshore.
After the battle, Cutter went ashore to assist in the care of the sick and wounded. Because of her former schooling in German, she was asked to care for three soldiers who were ill with typhoid fever and could not speak English. It was probably during this time that she contracted the disease herself. When the “Northerner” set sail at the beginning of March to follow the army to New Bern, NC, Cutter was suffering from fever and exhaustion. Her father was unable to be with her until March 19th. According to a manuscript at the Library of Congress containing biographical notes about Cutter, her father asked her several times that should she not recover, would she regret coming out on the expedition. Cutter supposedly replied, “Most surely not.
As her condition worsened, Cutter requested that she be buried next to Tidd on Roanoke Island. She died in her cabin on the morning of March 24, 1862, at the age of 18.
Her comrades in the regiment were devastated—calling her “the Florence Nightingale of the 21st.” When General Burnside learned of her death, he arranged for a special steamer to bring her remains to Roanoke Island, where she was buried beside Tidd with full military honors. When the National Cemetery was established in New Bern, the Secretary of War directed that she be interred there. She was one of the first women to give her life in the Civil War and one of the first to be buried in a National Cemetery.
She is remembered for her dedication to the soldiers she cared for, and she is listed on the "Roll of Honor" in the Library of Congress. Clara Barton, another famous Civil War nurse, even honored Carrie in the poem THE WOMEN WHO WENT TO THE FIELD, referencing her death " and poor Cutter dead in the sands of the sea".
The offered summery of the life of Carrie Cutter ends with the following written tribute by General Charles Wolcott:
“March 24, Miss Carrie E. Cutter, the Florence Nightingale of the 21st died of spotted fever on board the Steamer “Northerner” in New Bern harbor, aged nineteen years and eight months. Miss Cutter, an intellectual, refined and delicate woman, the daughter of our surgeon, had embarked on the “Northerner” with us at Annapolis and had accompanied the regiment since that time. A blessing to the Regiment she had bravely and patiently endured the discomforts of the crowded steamer, a thousand times greater to her, the only woman on board, than to any of us, and with constant unremitting devotion had added her gentle womanly care to her father’s wise and faithful energy in helping and nursing our sick and wounded men.” Wolcott’s history. 21st Regt. Mass. Vol. Page 82.
c. 1890. folio, 2 pieces 17” x 11.5”. 4 sides with 3 in manuscript, 2 being devoted to Carrie Cutter and 1 to Surgeon Calvin Cutter. Beautiful handwriting and easily read.
Sources:
National Museum of Civil War Medicine
