Lydia Wilson Holliday Civil War Nurse

Lydia was born in Delaware on 15 Sep 1802. Her parents were Samuel Wilson and Sarah Ann Gregg. Miss Wilson married William Ramsey Holliday on 7 Feb1822 at Freeport, Harrison County, Ohio. The couple made their permanent home ten years later in Wheeling, Virginia.

Lydia had seven children: three girls and four boys. Her youngest son, John W Holliday, served as a Sergeant in Company G of the 2^nd Ohio Infantry Volunteers from 1861 to 1862, when he was promoted to 1^st Lieutenant & Adjutant 15^th West Virginia Volunteers. He attained the rank of Lt. Colonel, was wounded at the Battle of Cedar Creek, and suffered an attack of typhoid fever during his service. Several letters handwritten by J.W. Holliday are preserved in the “West Virginia Adjutant Generals’ Papers 1861-1865” of which I have copies. Her sons William Wilson and Thomas J also served the Union.

According to an article describing the life and descendants of Lydia Holliday in the monthly publication “The Echoer” dated 1 Aug 1970, she began her work as a volunteer field nurse in the hospitals of the Union Army in the spring of 1861. She was nearly 60 years old.

“…she began her work by first appearing at Camp Carlile (sic) on Wheeling Island. This was a camp for the mobilization of raw recruits from the northern states. Many of the soldier boys had few or no clothes. Commissary and quartermaster arrangements were inadequate. (Lydia Holliday) unselfishly stripped her home of its furnishings to help allay their privations. Soon the sick and injured began arriving from the front. They were placed in improvised hospitals in the Sprigg House (now the Windsor Hotel), and in the Athaneum, later a military prison where Confederate soldiers taken prisoner were confined. Here, she could be found relieving their suffering” (The Echoer). She later spent time nursing “her boys” at Winchester and Washington, D.C., and became known as “Mother Holliday”.

After the war, Lydia was active in the Woman’s Relief Corps, an auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic. The Wheeling, West Virginia G.A.R. post was named after her son John. She was also active in the local chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union remaining a contributing member of the community throughout her long life.

Mother Holliday was a kind and simple soul who sent three sons to war and decided to offer her nursing skills to Union and Confederate soldiers alike without compensation.

During her later years, as a widow and with only three of her seven children living, she became destitute and in need of financial support. At age 90, she “made a declaration for the purpose of being placed on the pension roll of the United States” (National Archives Pension File, 5 Aug 1892). As she had not been officially hired by the United States medical service, her pension was initially denied. Along with her personal declaration, four others (including a military physician and a Lt. Colonel) who knew of her work offered affidavits to her cause to the State of West Virginia.

On 23 Feb 1897, “An Act Granting a pension to Lydia W Holliday” was passed by Congress:

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior be, and is hereby, authorized and directed to place the name of Lydia W Holliday, of Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia, late army nurse in the army hospitals of the United States Volunteers, in the late war, from eighteen hundred and sixty-one to eighteen hundred and sixty-five, on the pension roll, at twenty dollars per month from and after the passage of the Act” (National Archives).

She died 5 Oct 1899 of “old age and prostration” per West Virginia Death Records.

She was 97 years old. She is buried next to her husband among many members of her family at Mount Wood Cemetery, Wheeling, West Virginia. It is a small, rambling cemetery on a hill overlooking the Ohio River. Rest in Peace from your thankful 3rd great-granddaughter, also a nurse.

                                       

Thomas Cox, Civil War Veteran

Thomas Cox is my paternal great-grandfather, father of Frank Ellwood Cox, my father's father. He was born in Stark County, Ohio, in 1837. The 1840 Federal Census lists his father Lyman living in Jackson, Virginia, with one male under 5 (Thomas), one male 30-39 (Lyman), and one female 15-19 (mother? aunt? boarder?) for a total of three persons at the residence. By 1850, young Thomas, now 13 years old, lived in Jefferson, Ohio, with his parents and six younger sisters. The family would share the troubles of their community during the Panic of 1857, an economic depression that caused widespread unemployment, bank and business failures, and falling grain prices.

Another move found Thomas working as a farm laborer in Ohio County, Virginia, according to the 1860 census. Here Tom, his father, and now seven younger sisters lived in a rural farming area. His mother was not listed here or in later records. Did she die in childbirth? Of an infectious disease? Was her death accidental? However she died, the father-and-son wage earners in this family of nine shared a great responsibility. Great-grandpa must have learned the value of hard work, wise spending habits, and loyalty to family during these lean years.

With the inauguration of President-elect Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1861, secession of the southern states had begun and a war between North and South was inevitable. The War of the Rebellion began on April 12, 1861. On August 11, 1862, Thomas Cox enlisted in the Union Army at Smithfield, Ohio, in Company B, 52nd Regiment of Ohio Volunteers. On October 1st, the regiment marched from Louisville to Perryville, Kentucky, where it was present at the battle of October 8, 1862, a victory for the Union.

Civil War Campground

Returning to Louisville along with his regiment, records show that Thomas was absent due to sickness in November and December and in hospital during January and February, 1863. He was Honorably Discharged from the army while hospitalized. The "Certificate of Disability for Discharge" reads, in part, "I have carefully examined the said Thomas Cox...and find him incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of Physical Inability together with effusion of the abdomen". His career as a soldier was at an end.

Shortly thereafter, Thomas relocated to the newly established state of West Virginia. The IRS Tax Assessment Lists describe his occupations as "Peddler 2nd Class" and "Produce Broker". Nearby, his future father-in-law, William E Connelly, was a successful grocer. Perhaps these two worked together, and as a happy consequence, Thomas, and William's daughter Ida Viola, met, fell in love, and became engaged.
On October 28, 1868, Tom and Ida were married in the home of her parents in Wheeling, West Virginia. The marriage license lists his occupation as Farmer.

After a series of jobs including teamster, laborer, and confectioner, Great-Grandpa was admitted to the National Soldier's Home in Hampton, Virginia. He was 46 years old, and his twin sons Frank Ellwood and Fred were only 2 years old. It seems that his health had deteriorated steadily since the war, leading to the admitting diagnosis "disease of back, spine, and bowels". Seven years later, in 1890, a "Declaration for Invalid Pensions" was completed on behalf of Thomas wherein he is described as, "...wholly unable to earn a support by reason of Paralysis, being speechless, and almost wholly helpless..."

National Soldier's Home

Thomas Cox died on the 1st of April 1895 in the barracks of the last place he called home. The cause was "apoplexy with hemorrhage of the brain". Consistent with his status as Civil War veteran, he was buried at the Hampton National Cemetery. RIP, dear Grandpa.

Plot: Phoebus, Section D, 7081