Harriet
W. E. Hawley, wife of a Connecticut lawyer, became a nurse when her husband
donned a blue uniform, and the Hawley’s managed to stay together. Harriet spent
most of her days and many of her nights among the sick of the Seventh
Connecticut Regiment, led by her husband.
When
Hawley was sent to his native state, North Carolina, his wife found a place in
the hospital at Beaufort. After following her husband to Florida and South
Carolina, she went with him to Washington when his command was assigned to the
Army of the James in April 1864. Soon back in North Carolina, where her husband
was now in command as Wilmington, the Connecticut woman may have been the only
wife of a brigadier general to spend weeks nursing former inmates of
Andersonville Prison.
