Tag Archives: Charles A.L. Sampson

A nurse goes to war, Part 4: “We finished our rounds in double quick time”

On Wednesday, June 25, 1862 Union troops fought their last offensive action of the Peninsula Campaign at the Battle of Oak Grove. Federal regiments racked up casualties and accomplished precious little in the swamps west and southwest of Seven Pines, Va. “We had heard firing all the morning and knew what must follow,” said Bath […]

A nurse goes to war, Part 1 — “such suffering and confusion I never before witnessed”

After receiving a telegram on Wednesday, May 7, 1862, Bath nurse Sarah Sampson hurried to the war zone, which in that far-away spring was Virginia’s so-called “Peninsula.” What she saw and did there launched her into history as a 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment legend. Sarah Sampson had traveled with her husband, Lt. Col. Charles A.L. […]

Sarah Sampson hurtled three stairwells and the Secretary of State to meet President Abraham Lincoln

  Neither the weariness of her all-night vigil caring for wounded soldiers nor social propriety kept a demure Bath nurse from making her self-appointed introduction to President Abraham Lincoln — — and nor could Secretary of State William Seward. When Oliver Otis Howard took the 3rd Maine Infantry Regiment to Washington, D.C. in early June […]