Mary Jane Safford

Born:  December 31, 1834, Hyde Park, Vermont

Died:  December 8, 1891, Tarpon Springs, Florida

Resting Place:  Cycadia Cemetery, Tarpon Springs, Florida

Brief History:  Mary Jane Safford was born in Hyde Park, Vermont, the youngest of five children of Joseph Safford, a farmer, and Diantha Little Safford. She attended schools in Vermont, Illinois, and Montreal, Quebec. She then returned to Illinois, where she lived with her older brother and taught in a public school in Shawneetown. Safford grew up from the age of three in Crete, Illinois. During the 1850s she taught school while living with an older brother successively in Joliet, Shawneetown, and Cairo, Illinois. After her parents died, family members sent her to a female academy in Bakersfield, Vermont, then allowed her to travel in Canada to learn French and to act as governess to a German-speaking family while learning German. At the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861, Cairo became a town of some strategic importance because of its situation at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

When the Civil War began in the spring of 1861, volunteer soldiers descended upon the town of Cairo, setting up camps along the river banks. Diseases soon spread among the troops, and Mary Jane Safford began to visit the camps, tending to the sick and distributing food from her own kitchen. Gradually she won the respect of the officers and surgeons who initially opposed her. When sickness broke out, spawning a host of tent hospitals, She tended to both the physical and psychological needs of patients, providing them with food, handwork, games, and reading and writing materials with funding from Alfred. Working closely with surgeons, she prepared meals for patients based on individual dietary needs. She also met the energetic "Mother" Mary Ann Bickerdyke, who trained her in nursing techniques. In 1862, she accompanied the army of Ulysses S. Grant during the Battle of Shiloh, where she comforted and ministered to the wounded. Later, she served aboard a pair of military hospital ships on the Mississippi, the City of Memphis and the Hazel Dell. "Worn down" and frail, she left for Europe in July 1862.