A hero is someone we can admire without apology.
[Kitty Kelley]

Eliza E. George, Fort Wayne, Indiana’s noted Civil War nurse, has long been one of my heros. About twenty years ago, I was hired to draw a picture of her for a Lincoln Museum publication, and did some research about her.

She was in her mid-fifties when she volunteered to travel with the Indiana regiments as a nurse. Her son-in-law, Col. Sion S. Bass, had been killed at Shiloh. The soldiers she served came to call her Mother George.

After General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, she traveled to Wilmington, N.C. to help with released prisoners of war. There, she died of typhoid fever.

Mother George was buried in Lindenwood Cemetery will full military honors and the Indiana Sanitary Commission erected a monument to her memory.

I decorate Mother George’s grave with a small flag on Memorial Day in respect to military nurses everywhere.