No. 8671 Mary Jane Safford Blake
In February, 2006, Elizabeth Coachman, who is researching Mary Jane Safford Blake wrote that Mary Jane was probably not involved with the Russian connection formed between Isabel Chapin Barrows and Alice Stone Blackwell with Catherine Breshkovsky.
Then April, 2006, Elizabeth Coachman wrote again:
I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to you, but after a lot of digging I think I’ve finally found Mr. Blake whose name was neither James nor Peter. I now have a marriage certificate from Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) from September 25, 1872 where a Mr. Gorham Blake married a Miss Mary J Safford. I knew that she was supposed to have been married in Chicago in 1872 but it took some help from a genealogist to find it. I just picked up the print from the local Latter Day Saints Family History Center today.
I don’t know anything else about Mr. Blake except that he was reportedly from Boston originally. Perhaps you can learn more about him on your end. I did find a Gorham Blake out in California at the time of the gold rush in the 1850s. That Gorham Blake was an assayer who had his own mint and produced coins under the name Blake-Argell Company. Now whether that is the same Mr. Blake I don’t know. Mary Jane Safford’s brother Anson (A.P.K.) Safford was in California for the gold rush at about the same time and was politically connected so it is very possible that Blake and Anson Safford knew each other.
As for providing a better biography—since I’ve been collecting a lot of information and am getting more by the day I’ll be happy to eventually provide you with a synopsis of her life as I learn of it. I’ve been trying to learn if anyone has written a definitive biography of her beyond the few paragraphs usually allotted in most texts, but I’ve not found one. Thus, I am proposing to write a book about her and will be starting on a trip 5/1 which will include time in Illinois to learn about that part of her life.
Mary Jane Safford, 1831-1891.
Safford was born in Hyde Park, Vt. and lived in Crete, Ill., from age 3. in 1849, following her parents’ death, family members secured her education at an academy in Bakersfield, Vt., then allowed her to travel in Canada to learn French and act as governess to a German-speaking family to acquire skill in German. Unmarried, she took up residence with her elder brother Alfred Safford, a Joliet, Ill., businessman, then moved with him to Shawneetown, and in 1858 to Cairo, Ill. Safford’s exact birthdate is unknown, but she is thought to have been 29 at the outbreak of the Civil War.
On the arrival of nurse Mary Ann “Mother” Bickerdyke in Cairo in summer 1861, Safford volunteered to work with her as a nursing aide, showed talent, and was pressed into full-time nursing. With Bickerdyke, she cared for troops succumbing to camp diseases and the large numbers of wounded from the Battles of Belmont and Fort Donelson. Though based at the large field hospital in Cairo, she often left the facilities to care for the sick in surrounding camps, and is remembered for walking the Belmont battlefield under her own flag of truce searching out the wounded. After the Battle of Fort Donelson, Bickerdyke recalled that Safford worked 10 days in the Cairo hospital with little sleep, neared collapse, then accepted nursing duties aboard the transport boat City of Memphis. These exertions forced her to retire to her brother’s home in poor health.
Safford returned to nursing for the Battle of Shiloh, working aboard the transport boat Hazel Dell and with Bickerdyke in Savannah, Tenn., field hospitals. An attractive, polished, compassionate woman, she impressed her patients aboard the Hazel Dell and won the sobriquet “Angel of Cairo.” However, overworked and weak, she suffered a breakdown after caring for the Shiloh wounded, was confined to bed for several months, then, at her brother’s urging, accompanied the family of former Illinois governor Joel Matteson on a lengthy European tour to recuperate. She did not return to the U.S. until autumn 1866.
Interested in resuming medical work, Safford entered the New York Medical College for Women in 1867; graduated in 1869; studied surgery at the General Hospital of Vienna, Austria, through 1 871; continued studies at the University of Breslau, Germany, for several months, performing there the first ovariotomy ever done by a woman; returned to the U.S. late in 1872; and in 1873 opened a private practice in Chicago. In 1872 she married James Blake. When the marriage proved unworkable, Safford joined the Boston University School of Medicine faculty, divorced Blake in 1880, then retired from the school in poor health in 1886. She took up residence in Tarpon Springs, Fla., where she died in 1891.
Following Source: Historical Times Encyclopedia Of The Civil War.
Mary Jane Safford, 1834-1891
Mary Jane Safford was born in the state of Vermont in 1834. Her family moved to southern Illinois while she was a child. She earned teaching qualifications and began her career as a teacher near Cairo.
In 1861, the Civil War focused military attention on Cairo and the surrounding area. Cairo, at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, was considered of strategic importance because the rivers were a primary means of transportation. The Cairo area became the site of several military hospitals serving wounded soldiers. Mary Jane, along with Mother Bickerdyke and others, nursed wounded soldiers at the hospitals.
Following the war, Mary Jane earned a medical degree and opened a practice in Chicago. Poor health forced her to retire about 1886.
Bibliography
- Witter, Evelyn and David R. Collins. 1976. Illinois Women: Born to Serve. Illinos Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Mary Jane Safford served as a nurse under the indomitable Mary Ann Bickerdyke. Although she herself was small and frail, Mary Jane adopted Mother Bickerdyke’s standards and she too walked the Union battlelines at night, searching for wounded. Mary Jane nursed the sick and wounded at the battles of Belmont, Missouri and Fort Donelson, Tennessee. The story is told that Mary was once so close to enemy lines that Confederates fired on her. She made a flag of truce from her white petticoat and a branch and continued to nurse the sick. Mary Jane accepted duties aboard the Union ship “City of Memphis,” making five subsequent trips before collapsing from exhaustion. When the Civil War was over, Mary Ann Safford studied medicine and became one of the first female surgeons in America.
St. Petersburg Times, published June 30, 2000.
Tarpon Springs — Renovations at the city’s oldest house will be completed early next year — thanks, in part, to a recently approved grant from the state.
The $111,250 grant will pay for landscaping and second-floor renovations at the Safford House, said Kathy Monahan, the city’s community affairs administrator. The grant will pay for architectural work, floor finishes, wall-plastering, installation of a wood stove and historic wood fencing.
“This is the single most important restoration project the city has ever undertaken,” Monahan said. “It’s a part of our history that’s not well-known.”
The money will be available sometime after Saturday, when the state’s new fiscal year will begin. Monahan anticipates that the city will hold a grand opening in February. People will be able to tour the house, and there will be hands-on activities for children.
The house was built about 1883 and was home to Anson P.K. Safford, Tarpon Springs’ founder. Safford was a former territorial governor of Arizona and a one-time owner of 20,000 acres in Pinellas, Hillsborough and southern Pasco counties. Another resident was Safford’s sister, Mary Jane Safford, who was the first female physician in Florida.
In 1891, Anson and Mary Jane Safford died, and Soledad Safford, Anson Safford’s widow, had the house moved a block to its current location, 23 Parkin Court. She made money by operating it as as a boarding house. Through the years, the house changed hands and became dilapidated. In 1995, owner Aldo Pelligrini donated it to the city.
Monahan wrote grant proposals to the state and federal governments, and in the past few years, more than $800,000 has gone toward the renovation of the house. The state has given the city most of that money, more than $600,000 in all. The city has given about $150,000, and the federal government pitched in $80,000.
Renovations of the exterior of the house and the first floor already are completed. Structural work also is finished, and a replica of the original roof has been added.
Architects scraped through several layers of paint outside the house to find the original color, beige with dark green trim. The inside walls were stripped and revarnished, stained glass windows in the eight bay windows were repaired, and porcelain doorknobs were installed.
Once the work is completed, the house will be open to the public, although not all day every day, and by appointment, Monahan said.