US Army Nurse Charlotte G. Widdowson
Born: 10 August 1872, Rockton, Illinois
Death: 3 June 1971, Albuquerque, NM
Burial Site: SFNC, Plot # V, 1983
Charlotte Widdowson served as a U. S. Army nurse in Brest and Verdun from 22 July 1918 to 22 August 1919. According to the U.S. Army transport lists she departed New York 9 September 1918 on the ship Walmer Castle. Her military unit was Res N Anc with the Group “B” American Expeditionary Forces. She returned to the United States, departing Brest France on 4 August on the ship Patricia and arriving in Hoboken, NJ on 16 August 1919. She was 47 when she joined the Army Nurse Corps, much older than the average age of army nurses at that time. Unlike most of the Army nurses, she had spent about 15 years in private service before the war. Although she was too old to serve in the Second World War, she volunteered for the war effort by knitting and sewing for the Red Cross.1
In an article published in the Albuquerque Journal on May 30, 1965, Widdowson described taking her nursing training in the Chicago area where she became close friends with Helen Burnet Wood, the first casualty of the Army Nurse Corps during the war. Explaining her desire to serve as an Army nurse she said that she came from a “warring family.” Her father had served in the Civil War and her aunt was a Civil War nurse under Dorothea Dix. Thinking first that she would be sent to Siberia she noted that she had felt some apprehension about that because of an incident that caused a delay in her service. Her entry into the war had been delayed a year because her hands had been frozen while waiting in a blizzard leaving a patient’s home. Instead of Siberia she was sent to northwest France, serving in Red Cross hospital wards. Recalling the soldiers she treated, she said they “were all kids, and the war was nerve-wracking for them…but they held up well.” 1 Many of the men had either recently landed or were returning from the front and many were influenza victims.1
At the end of the war Widdowson returned to Evanston, IL where she worked as a nurse until she retired. Sometime after 1950 she moved to Albuquerque. Her obituary listed two nieces as her survivors, one from Albuquerque and the other from Los Angeles. 2
Notes:
- Hulbert, Ted. “City Woman, 93, Remembers Comrades of First War Days. Albuquerque Journal, May 30, 1965, pages A-1, A-7. Newspapers.com.
- Obituary Albuquerque Journal, 4 June 1971, page 48. Newspapers.com.
Prepared by Sue Taylor PhD, Central New Mexico Community College