Information
Sheet
R Risley, Alice Cary, 1847‑1939.
478 Papers, 1857‑1991, bulk
1863‑1939.
Seventeen
folders.
MICROFILM
This collection consists of
correspondence and miscellaneous papers of Alice Cary Risley, a volunteer
nurse for the Union army in New Orleans during
the Civil War, and a postwar resident of West
Plains, Missouri. Risley was active in the National Association
of Army Nurses of the Civil War and the Ladies of the Grand Army of the
Republic. She corresponded with members
of these organizations and with former soldiers.
Alice Cary Farmer was born on 1 November
1847 in Wilmington, Ohio.
Her parents were natives of Massachusetts,
and, through her mother’s family, Alice was related to Alice and Phoebe Cary,
noted poets of Ohio. When Alice was
three years old the Farmers moved to New Iberia
in the Bayou Teche region of Louisiana,
where her father made barrels for use in the sugar trade.
As Unionists with northern political
opinions the Farmers were not welcome on the Bayou Teche after the Civil War
broke out. In the fall of 1861, Alice's father fled and went into hiding in New Orleans, leaving his family in New Iberia.
Her mother was accused later of being a spy, and in August 1862 she fled
with Alice, paddling an open boat most of the way to New Orleans, which by then
was occupied by Union forces. There they
were reunited with her father.
After its capture in April 1862 New Orleans became the primary staging area for Union efforts
to recapture the lower Mississippi
Valley. The city was crowded with Yankee troops, and
public buildings and hospitals were filled with sick and wounded soldiers. Many of the Union infantry regiments were
New England units, and in the St. James Hospital Alice’s mother found men of
the 26th Massachusetts Infantry, which had been recruited in her
hometown of Townsend, Massachusetts. Some of the soldiers were in fact the sons
of her former schoolmates.
The Farmers volunteered their services to
the hospitals and began a daily routine of visiting the various locations in New Orleans, bringing
food and delicacies. When the wards became
full they took patients into their own home, sometimes for weeks at a
time. Their work was entirely voluntary
although the army did allow them to draw rations for the soldiers they
sheltered away from the hospital. Their
service to the sick and wounded continued through September 1865.
After the war the Farmers left New Orleans, relocating first in Massachusetts,
then Iowa, and finally in Illinois.
In 1870, near St. Louis, Alice
married Samuel A. Risley, a former officer of the 177th Illinois
Infantry and signal officer in General Grant's army before Vicksburg.
Risley had been hospitalized in New Orleans
in 1863, stayed at the Farmers' home, and had corresponded with Alice following the war.
After his marriage, Sam Risley came to
West Plains in Howell County,
Missouri, to establish the South Missouri Journal in partnership
with B. F. Olden. Later their
appointments as postmaster and assistant postmistress at West Plains and
Sam’s election as mayor put the Risleys among the most prominent of Howell County’s
citizens in social and civic circles.
Sam died in 1895, and in her later years Alice
lived in Jefferson City and Columbia,
and with her son in Alexandria,
Louisiana.
Alice was active in the Women’s Relief Corps
of Missouri, the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, and, especially in
the years after Samuel Risley’s death in 1894, the National Association of
Army Nurses of the Civil War. This
organization, composed of women who had volunteered their services in
hospitals during the war, met annually as an allied group at the national encampment
of the Grand Army of the Republic. Alice was elected
national president by the nurses in 1915 and held the post until her death in
1939, when she was the last surviving member of the National Association of
Army Nurses. Alice attended Grand Army of the Republic
reunions faithfully for forty years.
She was featured often in stories in the national press which usually
described her meetings with graybearded veterans whom she had once nursed in New Orleans. The Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic
Circle #76 at West Plains was named after Alice Risley. She died in Alexandria
in 1939, and is buried in Oak Lawn
Cemetery in West
Plains. In 1940 state officials of the
Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic dedicated a granite marker at her
gravesite.
Alice Risley's papers and memorabilia
were donated to the Harlin Museum at West Plains in 1990 by her grandson, John
Bohn, in behalf of the descendants of Alice’s
daughter, Florence Cary Risley. The
collection consists primarily of incoming correspondence along with miscellaneous
papers concerning the National Association of Army Nurses and the national encampments
of the Grand Army of the Republic. The
correspondence addressed to Alice Risley begins with a single letter in 1857
and continues through 1935. There is
only one folder of war-dated material but it includes letters written before
and after the family’s flight from the Bayou Teche, a pass from the provost
marshal of New Orleans, and a loyalty oath
signed by Alice's
mother, Phoebe Farmer. During her
service in army hospitals she received letters from soldiers and their families
in Maine, Massachusetts,
and New Hampshire
thanking her for attention to hospital patients. There is also a postwar invitation to a
“Grand Anniversary Ball” hosted by Co. B, 26th Massachusetts
Volunteers, at Groton Junction, Massachusetts. Alice
later became an honorary member of this regiment as well as the U.S. Veteran
Signal Corps Association, a group to which her husband belonged, and
corresponded with the officers of the organizations.
Her correspondents in later years
included many soldiers whom she had aided while they were sick, as well as Gen.
William Jewel of the Grand Army of the Republic, Margaret Grandle of the
Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, William H. Taft, who looked into pension
matters for her, and author George W. Cable, who answered her questions about
Cables she had known in New Orleans during the war. Some of the material from the 1880s consists
of recommendations by veterans for her appointment as postmistress of West
Plains, and some from the early 1900s is stamped “U.S. Pension Office” and was
apparently submitted to support her claim for a pension based on wartime
service. A register of the
correspondence has been prepared and has been filmed with the collection.
The miscellaneous papers include a
wartime memoranda book containing the names of soldiers and notations of those
who had died, an autograph book with signatures and verse by soldiers and
friends, and a folder of poetry and verse, ca. 1854‑1867. There are also “General Orders” issued by
the president of the National Association of Army Nurses, 1915‑1935,
papers concerning the national encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic,
1909‑1931, an undated address delivered to the Women’s Relief Corps,
newspaper clippings featuring her life and her activities during the Civil War,
and ribbons and badges from various reunions.
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