Nursing and the American Revolution

The United States marks its 250th anniversary this year, yet scholars continue to uncover new sources and perspectives that deepen our understanding of the nation’s founding. As the curator of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at Penn Nursing, I have spent the past few years working to recover a largely overlooked part of that story: the role of nursing during the American Revolution.

The result of this effort, Nursing the Revolution, is on display at the Barbara Bates Center in Penn Nursing’s Fagin Hall through November 20, 2026. Developed with Penn Libraries’ Director of Exhibits, Brittany Merriam, the exhibition combines the groundbreaking scholarship of historian Dr. Meg E. Roberts with reproductions of recently discovered archival materials from the privately held Foard Collection of Revolutionary War Nursing. Together, these rare sources help reveal how nursing and caregiving shaped both the struggle for independence and the foundations of modern American health care.

To celebrate and extend the exhibition’s impact, the Barbara Bates Center partnered with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies to host a one-day research symposium in February 2026. With additional support from the History and Sociology of Science Department and The Center for Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies, and the Program for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, this interdisciplinary event brought together scholars whose work is reshaping our understanding of nursing and care-giving labor in 18th century America.

Approximately 80 attendees joined presentations by Dr. Sarah Pearlman Shapiro (American Philosophical Society), Dr. Elise Mitchell (Swarthmore College), Dr. Lilith Todd (University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Jennifer W. Reiss (University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Susan Brandt (University of Colorado), Dr. Meg E. Roberts (University of Edinburgh), and others from the Penn community, including Penn Nursing Dean Antonia Villarruel, PhD, RN, FAAN. Together, the speakers challenged the audience to look beyond archival silences to find new sources, adopt new perspectives, and to recognize that the absence of caregivers—women, servants, and enslaved people—from historical narratives is there by design, not as a matter of fact.

A recurring theme throughout the symposium was the fluid nature of caregiving work in the 18th century. The distinctions that separate nurses, midwives, and physicians today did not exist with the same precision or rigidity during the Revolutionary era. As Roberts argued, to understand the deeper history of nursing, we must look beyond the appearance of the word “nurse” in historical records and instead examine the caregiving practices that constituted nursing work. Doing so pushes the history of nursing much further back into time, before the late 19th century when it took shape as a recognized profession.

Take Session I, with Shapiro and Mitchell, as an example. In Shapiro’s work, we learn about the danger and violence that female care workers, nurses, and healers experienced at the hands of British and Continental soldiers during the Revolutionary War. By combing through legal records that document assault cases from this era, Shapiro has been able to bring to light the lives of female healers who might otherwise have been lost entirely. Mitchell, too, introduces us to a little-known historical figure, a free Black woman living in Boston whose expertise in treating the smallpox provided her with a means to supporting her and her husband. Buried in historical city administrative records, her story has been largely missed until now.

In the second session, Todd and Reiss explored how many of the Revolution’s promises remained out of reach for women. Todd, the Stephen M. Gorn Family Assistant Professor of English at Penn, examined 18th century literature and the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft to broaden our understanding of wet nursing beyond the act of breastfeeding another woman’s child. Reiss’s dissertation research on pregnancy and childbirth at the end of the eighteenth century highlighted the changing experiences of patients as childbirth and reproductive care increasingly moved from women-centered community networks into the emerging field of male-led organized obstetrics.

The symposium’s themes were brought together in a keynote address by Susan Brandt, author of Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia. Brandt emphasized that these stories are not peripheral to the history of the American Revolution; they are central to it. As this recent wave of scholarship demonstrates, recovering the experiences of nurses, healers, mothers, and caregivers does more than enrich our understanding of the past. It makes the history of the Revolution more complete, more accurate, and ultimately more compelling.

One particularly distinctive aspect of the symposium was the participation of nurses in the audience. Their questions about the connections between workplace violence and risk for 18th century caregivers and the present-day experiences of nurses, for example, sparked lively discussions that highlighted the continued relevance of the symposium’s themes. Building on these interdisciplinary conversations, the Barbara Bates Center planned a webinar earlier this month in collaboration with the American Nurses Association that brought together symposium scholars and contemporary nurses to explore issues such as workplace violence and the often-hidden value of nursing labor across time.

Readers interested in learning more about the symposium can learn more in the June edition of EAS Miscellany, which features essays by several symposium participants. Penn students, faculty, and staff wishing to view Nursing the Revolution are welcome to stop by the Barbara Bates Center on the 2U floor of Fagin Hall (418 Curie Boulevard) during regular visiting hours, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. For members of the general public or to arrange a guided tour, please contact nhistory@nursing.upenn.edu to schedule your visit.

Learn more about Nursing the Revolution, on view now through November 20.