![]() 12 By 1900, the couple lived on Spruce Street in San Francisco with granddaughter Frances Kates and a Chinese-born cook, Charlie Yeng, who had immigrated in 1880. 11 In total, the Langes had nine children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Even with Mary’s experience working in a hospital, the Langes’ daughter Lillie died in 1867. Overall, however, medical practice became a more common woman’s profession in the late nineteenth-century as major medical schools trained women as nurses and doctors San Francisco’s first female doctor began practicing in 1875.10įollowing the Civil War, Charles continued to work as the Ordnance officer of Fort Point, and the growing family still lived at the Presidio Barracks. 9 The other women known to work at Fort Point were in much less esteemed positions, such as cooks, laundresses, or unemployed officer’s wives. 8 That Lange was not replaced upon vacating this position, possibly due to the forthcoming arrival of her fourth child, may reflect the limited need for nursing at Fort Point. The only major medical undertaking was the smallpox vaccination administered in March 1862. No soldiers died of wounds at Fort Point, and only a handful from accident, illness, or injury. During her tenure, most Fort Point patients suffered from the effects of unremitting wind, dampness, and cold, or from “social ailments” like venereal diseases and inebriation. Lange’s specific duties as matron, a position referencing female oversight of a hospital ward, are unknown. 7 Lange, nursing in a California outpost far removed from the major conflicts of the Civil War, experienced less direct trauma.įort Point’s hospital was very small, staffed only by an assistant surgeon and steward. They were exposed to a variety of unpleasant and unseemly sights and smells from aiding amputations to changing soiled linens. Many women volunteered on Civil War battlefields and in hospitals. 6 Her wartime nursing role was a new type of position for women pioneered only a decade earlier by well-known figures such as Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War between 18. Mary Lange served as Fort Point’s hospital matron from June 1861 until at least September 1862. As the Annals asserted, the Germans were “an orderly and intelligent people” who learned English and often naturalized while also “bearing a strong feeling towards ” and maintaining German-language newspapers. 4 According to the 1855 Annals of San Francisco, Anglo Americans did not feel threatened by Germans, unlike less-integrated French immigrants. 3īy the time the Langes arrived in California, the German population of San Francisco was nearly 10,000, largely made up of members of the middle, merchant class. In 1860, Charles was appointed Ordnance Sergeant in San Francisco, the seat of the Department of the Pacific, and they moved into a house outside Fort Point. 2 Charles entered the US Army in approximately 1852, and the birth of their first three children, Charles Jr., John, and Mary, reflect his various postings to Washington Territory, Utah Territory, and Oregon during the 1850s. The couple’s decision to emigrate may have been influenced by the unrest of the German revolutions of 1848-1849. 1 While no military threat materialized, Lange’s work exemplifies the expanded roles women began to play in medical support during the Civil War.īorn in Bavaria in 1830, Mary married Charles Lange from the Kingdom of Hanover in 1849, the same year they immigrated to the United States. Lange served at Fort Point as the sole hospital matron, and one of few women, in the period 1861-1862 at the recently constructed brick garrison that protected Unionist San Francisco from Confederate attack by water during the US Civil War. Hospital/Dispensary at Fort Point from "Historic Furnishings Report: Fort Point," 1994 ![]()
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