Born in Knox Co., Ohio, she had "a bend toward nursing" from an early age. In Cincinnati in 1847, she married Robert Bickerdyke, a musician and sign-painter. In 1856, they moved to Galesburg, Illinois, where, three years later, Robert died, leaving Mary to support herself and 2 half-grown sons by practicing as a "botanical physician".
She was described by Benjamin Woodward , a young Galesburg doctor and Union volunteer, as "a woman rough, uncultivated, even ignorant, but a diamond in the rough". Woodward wrote home about the filthy, ill-equpped hospitals at the Cairo camp where he was stationed; the citizens of Galesburg gathered together $500 worth of supplies and selected the 44-year-old widow to deliver them. She went, returning during the war years only occassionally to see her sons.
She became noted in Union camps, particularly in field hospitals as near the fighting as she could get, for ignoring regulations, cutting through red tape, resourcefully acquiring supplies and making "cyclone cleanups" of dirty hospitals. For the last she was given the name "Cyclone in Calico". She directed the operations of diet kitchens, introduced and managed army laundries and in general fought for the welfare of enlisted men. When a surgeon questioned her authority to take some action, she replied "On the authority of Lord God Almighty, have you anything that outranks that?"
She was with Major General Ulysses S. Grant's army en route to Vicksburg, and at Major General William T. Sherman's request, was with his army throughout the Atlanta campaign as the U.S. Sanitary Commission's field agent.
During later life, she was often asked for an account of her war service and she always replied "I served in our Civil War from June 19, 1861 to March 20, 1865. I was in nineteen hard-fought battles in the Departments of Ohio, Tennessee and Cunberland armies. I did the work of one, and I tried to do it well." She died in Bunker Hill, Kansas.
"The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War", Paricia L. Faust, Editor, Harper & Row, 1986
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