Maria M. C. Hall was born on July 1, 1836, in Washington, D.C., to David Aiken Hall and Martha Maria Condict. Her father was a lawyer and Whig politician. She attended school in Hartford, Connecticut, and by 1850, she was living with her grandparents in Morris, New Jersey.

 

When the Civil War began, she attempted to volunteer as a military nurse. Superintendent Dorothea Dix, however, rejected her application. She secured a position at the Indiana Hospital, an improvised facility located in the US Patent Office. She worked there from July 1861 until July 1862, and she helped care for Tad Lincoln in February 1862.

 

After the Battle of Antietam, she worked at a field hospital in Smoketown, Maryland. In May 1863, he began work at the United States Naval Academy’s hospital, and she was promoted to nurse superintendent the following year. She remained there until the hospital closed in the summer of 1865.

 

She married Lucas Richards on July 10, 1872, and they had at least two children: Lewis, born around 1874; and Maria, born around 1875. They lived in Farmington, Connecticut, and her husband worked as a paper manufacturer. They moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in the late 1800s, and her husband died in 1895. She died in West Hartford, Connecticut, on July 20, 1912, “after a short illness.”

 

Image: Maria M. C. Hall (courtesy Library of Congress)

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