Letters Of A Family During

The Civil War

BETHELEM — Author, historian, and editor Daniel Hoisington will present the lecture “The Inner Personal History of the Civil War, The Woolsey Family and the War” on Thursday, September 21, at 7 pm, at Bellamy Hall, the First Church of Christ Bethlehem.

Admission is $10 per person. The lecture is being sponsored by Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden.

Mr Hoisington’s lecture will focus on the contributions of the seven Woolsey siblings and their mother to the Union cause during the American Civil War. Three of the siblings were nurses and members of the US Sanitary Commission, stationed in hospitals near Gettysburg and other battle sites.

From their apartment in New York, Mrs Woolsey and her younger children supported the cause by making socks and organizing others to either serve in the war or contribute much needed services to aid the union soldiers. Following the war, the sisters returned to New York and Connecticut, where they started the nursing school at what is now Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, and the Connecticut School of Nursing, formerly in New Haven.

The Woolseys’ great niece, Caroline Woolsey Ferriday, the last private owner of The Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden, received the Woolsey letters, from which the lecture is based. Mr Hoisington will also be signing and selling copies of the newly re-released  My Heart Toward Home: Letters of a Family during the Civil War. Privately printed in the 19th century for the Woolsey family, the book documents the activities of the Woolseys during the war. Call The Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden at 203/266-7596 to register or for directions to the church hall.