War Mayor, Champion of Personal Relief Services
Carte de visite by Higgins & Collier of Boston, Mass. News of the skirmish between Union and Confederate forces at Blackburn's Ford on July 18, 1861, spread quickly. In the Boston, Mass., suburb of Chelsea, the mayor learned that among the wounded and dead were citizens from his town. Franklin Brigham “Frank” Fay, in his first term, caught they next train for Washington, D.C., to bring home his local boys. A philanthropist at heart, his experiences motivated him to become involved in charity work to support the war effort.
The same spirit that drove Mayor Fay inspired the governess of his three children, Helen Louise Gilson, to lend her services as a volunteer nurse.
By July 1862, Helen and Mayor Fay joined forces to volunteer on hospital transports involved in the massive withdrawal of Union troops from the Virginia Peninsula following the Seven Days Battles.
The dynamic duo's highly effective partnership spanned the next three years as they traveled to battlefields in service of the sick and wounded—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, The Wilderness and elsewhere. They functioned as an independent relief agency in cooperation with the U.S. Sanitary Commission (USSC), who supplied them with resources when Mayor Fay ran low on shipments from Chelsea.
That the USCC allowed them to operate is remarkable, for its organizers believed in a single unified system for soldier care. They realized however that Mayor Fay and Helen performed a critical function that the Commission could not. One of the Commission’s major fundraisers, Horace H. Furness, explained. “Neither the Sanitary Commission nor the Medical Department, admirable as they both are, can alleviate all the misery caused by the war. In reality, about one-eighth of the sum total remains unalleviated.” By supporting them, he argued, “We are helping to diminish that eighth, and in such a way as not to conflict with the method and discipline of the Medical Department, or with the grand federal principle of the Sanitary Commission.”
In short, Mayor Fay and Helen filled a void in soldier care.
Fay's experience tending to wounded and dying soldiers on the furthest reaches of the battlefield led him, in early 1864, to suggest the idea of systematic personal relief service to the USCC. In May of this year, the Commission created the Auxiliary Relief Corps to serve these men, as well as those in hospitals. This move by the USCC expanded its original mission to support men in camp and on campaign. Fay served as the first director of the Corps. He continued to work with Helen during this time.
Mayor Fay and Helen continued their work into 1865. Helen married the following year and died in 1868. Her death was attributed to a pregnancy compromised by weakened health due to the rigors of her army fieldwork.
Mayor Fay went on to become prominent in veteran’s affairs and social causes, including prison reform, the abolition of capital punishment and prevention of cruelty to animals. He served in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature. Upon his death in 1904 at age 83, he was remembered by Chelsea citizens as the "War Mayor."
Fay's finest tribute may have come from William Howell Reed, author of Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac. Reed dedicated the volume "to Hon. Frank Fay, the humane and Christian gentleman, the friend of the soldier, in camp and in hospital, and of the suffering everywhere."
Reed added, "Before he entered the Sanitary Commission, Mayor Fay was known in every division and brigade of the Army of the Potomac; and soldiers representing every state, and probably nearly every county of the loyal North, have at some time been the recipients of his kindly ministry or his generous aid. With characteristic foresight he was always prepared and was early upon the field of battle with his stores, replenished for the emergency, and with all these blessed appliances of healing moved among the dead and wounded, soothing helpless, suffering, and bleeding men, parched with fever, crazed with thirst, or lying neglected in the last agonies of death. And this service was performed with such humility and tenderness of spirit as is rarely combined with the self contained force of a matured and disciplined mind."
War Mayor, Champion of Personal Relief Services
Carte de visite by Higgins & Collier of Boston, Mass. News of the skirmish between Union and Confederate forces at Blackburn's Ford on July 18, 1861, spread quickly. In the Boston, Mass., suburb of Chelsea, the mayor learned that among the wounded and dead were citizens from his town. Franklin Brigham “Frank” Fay, in his first term, caught they next train for Washington, D.C., to bring home his local boys. A philanthropist at heart, his experiences motivated him to become involved in charity work to support the war effort.
The same spirit that drove Mayor Fay inspired the governess of his three children, Helen Louise Gilson, to lend her services as a volunteer nurse.
By July 1862, Helen and Mayor Fay joined forces to volunteer on hospital transports involved in the massive withdrawal of Union troops from the Virginia Peninsula following the Seven Days Battles.
The dynamic duo's highly effective partnership spanned the next three years as they traveled to battlefields in service of the sick and wounded—Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, The Wilderness and elsewhere. They functioned as an independent relief agency in cooperation with the U.S. Sanitary Commission (USSC), who supplied them with resources when Mayor Fay ran low on shipments from Chelsea.
That the USCC allowed them to operate is remarkable, for its organizers believed in a single unified system for soldier care. They realized however that Mayor Fay and Helen performed a critical function that the Commission could not. One of the Commission’s major fundraisers, Horace H. Furness, explained. “Neither the Sanitary Commission nor the Medical Department, admirable as they both are, can alleviate all the misery caused by the war. In reality, about one-eighth of the sum total remains unalleviated.” By supporting them, he argued, “We are helping to diminish that eighth, and in such a way as not to conflict with the method and discipline of the Medical Department, or with the grand federal principle of the Sanitary Commission.”
In short, Mayor Fay and Helen filled a void in soldier care.
Fay's experience tending to wounded and dying soldiers on the furthest reaches of the battlefield led him, in early 1864, to suggest the idea of systematic personal relief service to the USCC. In May of this year, the Commission created the Auxiliary Relief Corps to serve these men, as well as those in hospitals. This move by the USCC expanded its original mission to support men in camp and on campaign. Fay served as the first director of the Corps. He continued to work with Helen during this time.
Mayor Fay and Helen continued their work into 1865. Helen married the following year and died in 1868. Her death was attributed to a pregnancy compromised by weakened health due to the rigors of her army fieldwork.
Mayor Fay went on to become prominent in veteran’s affairs and social causes, including prison reform, the abolition of capital punishment and prevention of cruelty to animals. He served in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature. Upon his death in 1904 at age 83, he was remembered by Chelsea citizens as the "War Mayor."
Fay's finest tribute may have come from William Howell Reed, author of Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac. Reed dedicated the volume "to Hon. Frank Fay, the humane and Christian gentleman, the friend of the soldier, in camp and in hospital, and of the suffering everywhere."
Reed added, "Before he entered the Sanitary Commission, Mayor Fay was known in every division and brigade of the Army of the Potomac; and soldiers representing every state, and probably nearly every county of the loyal North, have at some time been the recipients of his kindly ministry or his generous aid. With characteristic foresight he was always prepared and was early upon the field of battle with his stores, replenished for the emergency, and with all these blessed appliances of healing moved among the dead and wounded, soothing helpless, suffering, and bleeding men, parched with fever, crazed with thirst, or lying neglected in the last agonies of death. And this service was performed with such humility and tenderness of spirit as is rarely combined with the self contained force of a matured and disciplined mind."