This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[319]
kept in funds by private gifts, and by the united efforts of all the churches of Newport, and the United States Naval Academy which was removed thither from Annapolis, Maryland, in the spring of 1861.
During the summer of 1861 several ladies (summer residents of Newport), were in the habit of sending to Miss Wormeley many poor women, with the request that she would furnish them with steady employment upon hospital clothing, the ladies paying for the work.
After they left, the poor women whom they had thus benefited, felt the loss severely, and the thought occurred to Miss Wormeley that the outfitting of a great army must furnish much suitable work for them could it be reached.
After revolving the subject in her own mind, she wrote to Quartermaster-General Meigs at Washington, making inquiries, and was by him referred to the Department Quartermaster-General, Colonel D. H. Vinton, United States Army, office of army clothing and equipage, New York.
Colonel Vinton replied in the kindest manner, stating the difficulties of the matter, but expressing his willingness to give Miss Wormeley a contract if she thought she could surmount them.
Miss Wormeley found her courage equal to the attempt, and succeeded far more easily than she had expected in carrying out her plans.
She engaged rooms at a low rent, and found plenty of volunteer assistance on all sides.
Ladies labored unweariedly in cutting and distributing the work to the applicants.
Gentlemen packed the cases, and attended to the shipments.
During the winter of 1861-2 about fifty thousand army shirts were thus made, not one of which was returned as imperfect, and she was thus enabled to circulate in about one hundred families, a sum equal to six thousand dollars, which helped them well through the winter.
Colonel Vinton, as was the case with other officers very generally throughout the war, showed great kindness and appreciation of these efforts of women.
And though this contract must have
1867.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.