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Lena Clarke <I>Angevine</I> Warner

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Lena Clarke Angevine Warner

Birth
Grenada, Grenada County, Mississippi, USA
Death
18 Aug 1948 (aged 81)
Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee, USA
Burial
Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, USA Add to Map
Plot
Chapel Hill 896 1/2
Memorial ID
View Source
Some references give her birthdate May 18, 1869. Death certificate gives birthdate May 16, 1868. A family bible says May 16, 1867. 1870 census gives her age as 3 while 1880 census says 11.

Orphaned in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, Lena was sent to St. Mary's School for Girls in Memphis where her mother's cousin Susan Wynn was a Sister of the order. There she was exposed to lives of service, becoming particularly enthralled with the story of Florence Nightingale, so she was determined to become a nurse herself after hearing a lecture by Dr. Robert Wood Mitchell on the need for professional nurses. Dr. Mitchell was president of the Memphis Board of Health, founder of the Memphis City Hospital, professor of materia medica at Memphis Medical College, and was one of eleven U.S. physicians appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to the first National Board of Health in 1879, charged primarily with studying the cause of yellow fever.

Lena Angevine's uncle, Ezekiel Bolivar Mayhew, was a Civil War surgeon who worked with Dr. Mitchell's associate, Dr. Richard Brooke Maury, during the war. Lena's grandfather, George Washington Mayhew, also was a medical doctor. Volunteer charity work was considered a noble hobby for women in the day but many still considered it unseemly for ladies to work, certainly as a trained nurse. So it was over her grandmother's objections that Lena enrolled in the Mitchell-Maury Infirmary nursing program begun by Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Maury. Dr. Maury's son John married Lena's cousin Flora Turley, daughter of Senator Thomas Battle Turley.

In 1887 Lena was the first to enroll in the first class of four nursing students at the Mitchell-Maury Infirmary. The other three included Hattie Dunlap, Effie Ingram (1876-1959), and Matilda (Tillie) J. Aiken (1858-1923) (Journal of the American Medical Association, 6 July 1889, p.35). Effie and Lena, the younger of the class, were second cousins, Lena having convinced Effie to enroll a couple of months after starting herself. They were usually cited first in the list of graduates, perhaps because they were the youngest, while the older two ladies seem somewhat ignored. Effie nursed for many years in Memphis and died unmarried. She nursed Lena's niece Lucille Weir Thomas (private duty) when in childbirth at Memphis's Methodist Hospital in 1930. Tillie Aiken married John Gilman McKinney and retired from nursing only a couple of years after getting her nursing certificate. Hattie Dunlap (born at Eutaw, Alabama in 1851) went on to nurse Civil War veterans at the Jefferson Davis Soldiers Home, "Beauvoir," in Biloxi, where Lena's Aunt Belle Mayhew Rose was sent to live her last year. It has not been determined whether Hattie is buried there, though she may be.

Lena Angevine completed her course three months before the other members of her class and went to Chicago for three months' post-graduate training as a surgical assistant. She studied under Isabel Hampton Robb, founder of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses (1893) and the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (1896), renamed (1911) the American Nurses Association. The group was renamed the American Nurses Association in 1911. She returned to receive her diploma along with the other three on July 22, 1889, at which time both Doctors Mitchell and Maury handed the diploma to her jointly while informing the audience with obvious pride that Lena Angevine was the first graduate of an "accredited" nursing school in the South. It was a distinction she cherished the rest of her life and spoke of oftentimes. Col. John McLeod Keating, editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal and author of The History of the Yellow Fever (1879), gave an address at the commencement exercises purportedly stating (as the school claimed) that it was the only accredited nursing program south of the Mason-Dixon Line, apparently basing such recognition on membership in the national association, though a designation which two nursing programs, one in Charleston and one in New Orleans, later disputed.

Dr. Maury, her mentor and lifelong friend, made her his surgical nurse.
She retired from her duties in 1894 and married to Charles Edward Warner, the marriage being performed May 11, 1894, by Rev. Thomas LaFayette Cole at Trinity Episcopal Church, Portland, Oregon.
Three months later she returned to Memphis a grieving widow, or so her family and friends thought. She resumed her former position as Dr. Maury's surgical nurse.

In 1895, she also served on the committee planning the new City of Memphis Hospital, which led her to Baltimore to study the nursing program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Nursing School of the Memphis City Hospital opened in 1898 at 860 Madison Avenue and continues today as the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry.

In 1898 she volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War, since the ravages of yellow fever were having deadly toll in Cuba, where immune American nurses were in demand. Having survived the fever in 1878, Lena was considered immune.

In 1900, she went to Cuba and served as the Charge Nurse of the entire island. She was the charge nurse of the yellow fever experiments performed by the Reed Commission in its mosquito investigation. Her service record shows the facts. And the official experiments' notes are in her own handwriting, no one else's.

The true story of the yellow fever experiments has never been told. Even recent books claiming to tell the true story do little but perpetuate the old lies. Dr. James Carroll and nurse Lena Angevine Warner were maligned and discredited as delusional and paranoid by those who decided how the story of the experiments should be presented to the public. The official presentation of the yellow fever experiments included numerous misrepresentations and deceits as well as an elaborate insurance fraud scheme to profit widows and orphans of the experiment's heroes at the insurance companies' expense rather than governmental remuneration. Documents in the Philip Hench Collection include statements made by men claiming that Lena Warner was not even present during the experiments. However, the facts are shown in her official service record. Also, the official nurse's notes from the experiments are in Warner's own handwriting, no one else's.

From 1915-45 she served as Tennessee State Specialist in Health and Sanitation.

New York TIMES, Aug. 20, 1948, page L-17:
"Knoxville, Tenn., Aug. 19 (AP) -- Mrs. Lena A. Warner, last survivor of the (Walter) Reed Committee which discovered that the stegomyia mosquito bite causes yellow fever, died here last midnight at the age of 79.
Her interest in yellow fever dated from 1877 (1878) when her parents and five brothers and sisters died of the disease during an epidemic at Memphis.
Then and there, Mrs. Warner once said, she resolved to be a nurse and do what she could do to stamp out the disease.
The first woman in Tennessee to become a registered nurse, she devoted all her adult life to nursing and public health work. Two years ago she retired after thirty years as health director of the University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service."

A sister - Mary Louisa Angevine
A sister - Hallie Angevine Weir
A brother - Alan James Angevine, Sr
A sister - Warren Ione 'Cissye' Angevine Cole.
Some references give her birthdate May 18, 1869. Death certificate gives birthdate May 16, 1868. A family bible says May 16, 1867. 1870 census gives her age as 3 while 1880 census says 11.

Orphaned in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, Lena was sent to St. Mary's School for Girls in Memphis where her mother's cousin Susan Wynn was a Sister of the order. There she was exposed to lives of service, becoming particularly enthralled with the story of Florence Nightingale, so she was determined to become a nurse herself after hearing a lecture by Dr. Robert Wood Mitchell on the need for professional nurses. Dr. Mitchell was president of the Memphis Board of Health, founder of the Memphis City Hospital, professor of materia medica at Memphis Medical College, and was one of eleven U.S. physicians appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to the first National Board of Health in 1879, charged primarily with studying the cause of yellow fever.

Lena Angevine's uncle, Ezekiel Bolivar Mayhew, was a Civil War surgeon who worked with Dr. Mitchell's associate, Dr. Richard Brooke Maury, during the war. Lena's grandfather, George Washington Mayhew, also was a medical doctor. Volunteer charity work was considered a noble hobby for women in the day but many still considered it unseemly for ladies to work, certainly as a trained nurse. So it was over her grandmother's objections that Lena enrolled in the Mitchell-Maury Infirmary nursing program begun by Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Maury. Dr. Maury's son John married Lena's cousin Flora Turley, daughter of Senator Thomas Battle Turley.

In 1887 Lena was the first to enroll in the first class of four nursing students at the Mitchell-Maury Infirmary. The other three included Hattie Dunlap, Effie Ingram (1876-1959), and Matilda (Tillie) J. Aiken (1858-1923) (Journal of the American Medical Association, 6 July 1889, p.35). Effie and Lena, the younger of the class, were second cousins, Lena having convinced Effie to enroll a couple of months after starting herself. They were usually cited first in the list of graduates, perhaps because they were the youngest, while the older two ladies seem somewhat ignored. Effie nursed for many years in Memphis and died unmarried. She nursed Lena's niece Lucille Weir Thomas (private duty) when in childbirth at Memphis's Methodist Hospital in 1930. Tillie Aiken married John Gilman McKinney and retired from nursing only a couple of years after getting her nursing certificate. Hattie Dunlap (born at Eutaw, Alabama in 1851) went on to nurse Civil War veterans at the Jefferson Davis Soldiers Home, "Beauvoir," in Biloxi, where Lena's Aunt Belle Mayhew Rose was sent to live her last year. It has not been determined whether Hattie is buried there, though she may be.

Lena Angevine completed her course three months before the other members of her class and went to Chicago for three months' post-graduate training as a surgical assistant. She studied under Isabel Hampton Robb, founder of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses (1893) and the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (1896), renamed (1911) the American Nurses Association. The group was renamed the American Nurses Association in 1911. She returned to receive her diploma along with the other three on July 22, 1889, at which time both Doctors Mitchell and Maury handed the diploma to her jointly while informing the audience with obvious pride that Lena Angevine was the first graduate of an "accredited" nursing school in the South. It was a distinction she cherished the rest of her life and spoke of oftentimes. Col. John McLeod Keating, editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal and author of The History of the Yellow Fever (1879), gave an address at the commencement exercises purportedly stating (as the school claimed) that it was the only accredited nursing program south of the Mason-Dixon Line, apparently basing such recognition on membership in the national association, though a designation which two nursing programs, one in Charleston and one in New Orleans, later disputed.

Dr. Maury, her mentor and lifelong friend, made her his surgical nurse.
She retired from her duties in 1894 and married to Charles Edward Warner, the marriage being performed May 11, 1894, by Rev. Thomas LaFayette Cole at Trinity Episcopal Church, Portland, Oregon.
Three months later she returned to Memphis a grieving widow, or so her family and friends thought. She resumed her former position as Dr. Maury's surgical nurse.

In 1895, she also served on the committee planning the new City of Memphis Hospital, which led her to Baltimore to study the nursing program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Nursing School of the Memphis City Hospital opened in 1898 at 860 Madison Avenue and continues today as the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry.

In 1898 she volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War, since the ravages of yellow fever were having deadly toll in Cuba, where immune American nurses were in demand. Having survived the fever in 1878, Lena was considered immune.

In 1900, she went to Cuba and served as the Charge Nurse of the entire island. She was the charge nurse of the yellow fever experiments performed by the Reed Commission in its mosquito investigation. Her service record shows the facts. And the official experiments' notes are in her own handwriting, no one else's.

The true story of the yellow fever experiments has never been told. Even recent books claiming to tell the true story do little but perpetuate the old lies. Dr. James Carroll and nurse Lena Angevine Warner were maligned and discredited as delusional and paranoid by those who decided how the story of the experiments should be presented to the public. The official presentation of the yellow fever experiments included numerous misrepresentations and deceits as well as an elaborate insurance fraud scheme to profit widows and orphans of the experiment's heroes at the insurance companies' expense rather than governmental remuneration. Documents in the Philip Hench Collection include statements made by men claiming that Lena Warner was not even present during the experiments. However, the facts are shown in her official service record. Also, the official nurse's notes from the experiments are in Warner's own handwriting, no one else's.

From 1915-45 she served as Tennessee State Specialist in Health and Sanitation.

New York TIMES, Aug. 20, 1948, page L-17:
"Knoxville, Tenn., Aug. 19 (AP) -- Mrs. Lena A. Warner, last survivor of the (Walter) Reed Committee which discovered that the stegomyia mosquito bite causes yellow fever, died here last midnight at the age of 79.
Her interest in yellow fever dated from 1877 (1878) when her parents and five brothers and sisters died of the disease during an epidemic at Memphis.
Then and there, Mrs. Warner once said, she resolved to be a nurse and do what she could do to stamp out the disease.
The first woman in Tennessee to become a registered nurse, she devoted all her adult life to nursing and public health work. Two years ago she retired after thirty years as health director of the University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service."

A sister - Mary Louisa Angevine
A sister - Hallie Angevine Weir
A brother - Alan James Angevine, Sr
A sister - Warren Ione 'Cissye' Angevine Cole.


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