Anna Maxwell
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Anna Caroline Maxwell (March 14, 1851 - January 2, 1929), nurse nicknamed the American Florence Nightingale.
Her pioneering activities were crucial to the growth of professional nursing in the US.
With no formal training, she first entered the nursing field as a matron at New England Hospital in 1874. She left in 1876 and spent two years in England before enrolling at Boston City Hospital Training School for Nurses. In 1880 she was hired to start a training school at Montreal General Hospital. In 1881 she was offered the superintendency of the Training School for Nurses at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. In 1889 she moved to New York to be director of nursing at St. Luke's Hospital, and from there became superintendent of nursing at Presbyterian Hospital of New York from 1892-1921, and was the first director of the hospital's nursing school, which later became the Columbia University School of Nursing.
In the Spanish-American War she organized nurses for the military. Through her actions the Army Nurse Corps was established and nurses were later given officer rank. She helped design the uniform for US army nurses. During World War I, France awarded her the Medaille de l'Hygiene Publique (Medal of honor for Public Health).
With Amy E. Pope she wrote a textbook: Practical Nursing.
The first building to open at the new Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in 1928 was the home for the university's nursing school and was named Anna C. Maxwell Hall in her honor. Maxwell Hall was razed in 1984 to make room for a new hospital building, and the university established an endowed professorship at the nursing school in Maxwell's name.
She is one of the early women buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Columbia University awarded her an honorary master of arts degree.
