Ella King Newsom was a Confederate nurse in the American Civil War. Her tireless efforts earned her the nickname "The Florence Nightingale of the Confederate Army" and gained a reputation for devotion to service second to no other hospital worker in the Western Theatre.
Background
Ella King Newsom was born in 1830 in Brandon, Rankin County, Mississippi, United States. She was the daughter of Julia and Thomas S. N. King. She was the second child and the oldest of four daughters in a family of seven. Her father, a native of North Carolina, was the first pastor to serve the First Baptist Church of Brandon. In later years Ella recalled that he "was quite well off in this world's goods," and that her mother came of an aristocratic Georgia family. In 1849 the Kings moved to a farm in Phillips County.
Education
Ella King Newsom attended Mary Sharp College, a Baptist institution.
When the war came Ella King Newsom was twenty-two and lived in Winchester. After returning her charges to their Arkansas residence, she set out for Memphis with hospital stores which she had collected and a number of her servants. There she received instruction in nursing at the City Hospital, served in the Southern Mothers' Home, and after the battle of Belmont accepted the position of matron in the Overton Hospital. In December 1861 Ella King Newsom took her servants and a carload of supplies to Bowling Green Ky., where she ministered to disabled Confederate troops amidst scenes bordering on chaos, for the Confederacy at this time had organized only limited hospital service. In the absence of adequate official personnel, she agreed, at the request of medical officers, to take charge of the hospital in Bowling Green, a position she held until the surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862.
During the weeks following this twin disaster for the Confederacy - the beginning of General Grant's advance on the Western front - Mrs. Newsom organized a military hospital in Nashville's Howard High School and directed the movements of hospitalized troops from Nashville to Winchester, Tennessee, and from Winchester to Atlanta. In answer to an urgent appeal for her services after the battle of Shiloh, she left Atlanta with servants and supplies and continued her ministrations in Corinth, Mississippi, at the Tishomingo and Corinth House hospital establishments. The latter part of 1862 found Mrs. Newsom at Chattanooga, where she had charge of the Foard Hospital. After the act of September 1862 providing for organized hospital staff, she served in an official capacity as chief matron of Chattanooga's Academy Hospital, where she supervised "the entire domestic economy," with particular responsibility for regulating the patients' diet. Some measure of the esteem in which she was held is seen in the naming of a Chattanooga hospital, the Newsom, in her honor.
Later, as the Army of Tennessee retreated southward, Ella King Newsom organized hospitals in Marietta. Although failing health required her to take occasional rests from hospital duties late in the war, she adhered to her original resolution until the end of the fighting and acquired a reputation for devoted service second to no other hospital worker in the Western theatre.
Ella King Newsom's later life was in large part a rather grim struggle for existence. Much of her property had been confiscated or destroyed during the war, and the 1,100-acre cotton plantation she had inherited from her first husband was apparently lost through business misfortunes of the second.
When, however, the election of Cleveland brought the first postwar Democratic administration into office, with a Southerner, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, as Secretary of the Interior, Ella King Newsom obtained a government post in Washington. For the next three decades, from August 20, 1886, until her resignation on January 10, 1916, she served in the General Land Office, the Patent Office, and the Pension Office.
Achievements
Views
Ella King Newsom was as part of a group of women who fought contemporary attitudes against women in military hospitals.
Personality
The high respect Ella King Newsom commanded from top-ranking officers - attributable in part perhaps to her intelligence, wealth, and social position - helped her obtain supplies and other considerations essential to the effective care of the disabled. Her gentleness and unswerving loyalty to the cause inspired hospital associates and gave her a place in the firmament of Confederate heroines as "the Florence Nightingale of the South."
Connections
Ella King Newsom married a rich Arkansan, Doctor Frank Newsom, who soon died and left her a wealthy widow.
She was married a second time to Confederate veteran Colonel W.H. Trader in 1867. Their only daughter was May D. Trader.