Bickerdyke, Mary Ann Ball (1817-1901), was an American Civil War hospital worker who became known as Mother Bickerdyke. She was born on July 19, 1817, in Knox County, Ohio, and studied nursing in Cincinnati. Bickerdyke moved to Galesburg, Illinois, in 1856. During the Civil War (1861-1865), she cared for the sick and wounded on battlefields and in Union Army hospitals. After the war ended, Bickerdyke helped obtain pensions for veterans and Civil War nurses. She also did missionary work in New York. She died on Nov. 8, 1901. A monument to her memory stands in Galesburg, where she and her husband are buried.
