Helen L. Gilson, Civil War nurse and head of the Colored Hospital Service, half length portrait, seated J.C. Moulton, Fitchburg

Photograph shows portrait of Helen Louise Gilson, also known as Helen Louise Gilson Osgood, who cared for wounded and dying soldiers at battles including Yorktown, Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Petersburg and advocated for a better hospital for African American soldiers and the creation the Colored Hospital Service, of which she became the head until the end of the war.

Case: Leather; floral design.
Text on manuscript fragment (torn envelope): Miss Helen L. Gilson, care Sanitary Commission, Washington, D.C., Potomac Creek Hospital, 2d Division, 3d Army Corps."
Text on second manuscript affixed inside case behind photograph: "Jan'y 1863, nurse Sanitary Com., nurse in this hospital."
Deposit; Tom Liljenquist; 2018; (D074)

Purchased from: Chris Foard, The Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing, July 2018.
Forms part of: Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).
Forms part of: Daguerreotype collection (Library of Congress).
pp/liljwoch