Background
Hancock was born in Hancocks Bridge, New Jersey to Quakers of old colonial ancestry.
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Cornelia Hancock
Edit ProfileEducation
The youngest of four children, Hancock was educated "in the Salem (county) academies." Her sister Ellen worked at the United States Mint in Philadelphia.
Career
Hancock"s service extended from July 6, 1863 to May 23, 1865. However, Dorothea Dix, the superintendent of Union Army nurses, personally refused to enroll Hancock because she did not meet her requirements that the military"s female nurses be, "mature in years (at least 30), plain almost to homeliness in dress, and by no means liberally endowed with personal attractions.” In other words: at only 23, Hancock was too young and attractive to be an army nurse Hancock was the only female nursing volunteer to be rejected.
Hancock went to Gettysburg anyway.
"I got into Gettysburg the night of July sixth – where the need was so great that there was no further cavil about age,” she wrote in her journal. She had no formal training as a nurse
But after three weeks, she was tending to eight tents of wounded. In October she tended to the large numbers of hungry and injured escaped slaves who were arriving in Washington, District of Columbia. On February
10, 1864 Hancock joined the II Corps, and served with them at the Battle of the Wilderness and the Siege of St. Petersburg.
She worked in the II Corps hospital of the Depot Field Hospital at City Point. After the war, she opened a school for African Americans in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. In Philadelphia, she founded several charity organizations.
She also served as president of the National Association of Army Nurses of the Civil War.
She died of nephritis in 1927 and her ashes were buried at Cedar Hills Friends Cemetery in Harmersville, New Jersey. Her popular collection of wartime letters is no longer in print.
A commemorative flagstone was placed in her honor at the Alloway Creek Friends Meeting House.
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Quotations: "I got into Gettysburg the night of July sixth – where the need was so great that there was no further cavil about age,”.
