Portrait of a Nurse
The large and prosperous Akin family had lived in
the Quaker Hill community north of New York City
for generations. The eighth of Judge Albro Akin’s ten
children, Amanda was thirty-five when she left to join
the Union cause in April 1863. She returned home
after serving at Armory Square Hospital, and few
details of the rest of her life are known.
Akin married Dr. Charles W. Stearns in 1879, was
widowed in 1887, and apparently had no children.
In 1909, at age eighty-one, she published an account
of her nursing experience, The Lady Nurse of Ward E,
under her married name of Amanda Akin Stearns. She
died in February 1911 and is buried with her husband
in Pawling, New York.
—Amanda Akin, 1863
Amanda Akin, April 1863
This photograph was taken at the time Akin set off to Washington, D.C., to become a nurse. She included it in her published book. (Courtesy of National Library of Medicine)
Armory Square Nurses
Amanda Akin and three of the nurses she worked with at Armory Square Hospital: (clockwise from top) Helen Griggs, S. Ellen Marsh, Nancy Maria Hill, and Akin. She included this image in her book The Lady Nurse of Ward E. (Courtesy of National Library of Medicine (Courtesy of National Library of Medicine)
