Megan VanGorder's "A Mother’s Work"

Megan VanGorder is assistant professor of history at Illinois State University.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse, and shared the following:

The top half of Page 99 of A Mother’s Work is occupied by an image of a large building, the Illinois Soldier’s Orphan’s Home, which was officially opened to occupants in August 1867 in Normal, Illinois. In front of the building, the reader can discern a row of children. They are dwarfed by the grandeur of the building, but they stand out because they all dressed in white and neatly assembled. These children are presumably the orphans or half-orphans of Illinois Civil War soldiers who occupy the home.

The remaining text on page 99 states:

[Mary Bickerdyke] also inserted herself into traditionally male-dominated aspects of organizational development, influencing fundraising efforts, teacher and matron assignments, and even decisions about the home’s location.

Publicly, the creation of the Illinois Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home was the province of powerful Illinois men eager to publicly demonstrate their dedication to fallen soldiers and their families. Even before the guns fell silent, state leaders began to anticipate the social and financial responsibilities that would accompany peace. As the Civil War was still being waged across the South, the Illinois General Assembly recommended a “tax for destitute families of soldiers, schools for soldier’s [sic] orphans, and a state sanitary bureau” to prepare for the postwar reality in early 1865. Governor Richard Yates entreated the state’s citizens to support the measure and invoked their patriotism and collective obligation to the general welfare of their neighbors: “No State is worthy of its sovereignty, and no government the respect of its people, who will not protect and nurture the children of its soldiers...”

The Page 99 Test hints at the major themes of the book and works reasonably well as a way to understand how Mary Bickerdyke consistently worked to “insert herself into traditionally male-dominated” spaces. However, the page only contains a single example of that lifelong journey. From page 99 alone, a reader might reasonably assume the book is primarily about the founding of the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home or about state-level policy formation. In reality, the institutional story is one strand within a broader exploration of how one woman leveraged Civil War service to reimagine authority, obligation, and maternal citizenship in the nineteenth century.

The image of the Illinois Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home visually signals that this book is not simply a wartime narrative, but a study of how wartime service translated into long-term structures of veteran and dependent care. The accompanying text underscores one of the book’s core arguments that Bickerdyke did not merely operate within accepted feminine spheres of professionalism but took direct action to influence institutions pertaining to soldier or veteran care. The page also situates this example of her work within the broader political culture, showing how male state leaders publicly claimed authority over commemorative and welfare efforts while women like Bickerdyke exerted influence in ways that were less visible but no less consequential.

A Mother’s Work spans four decades of Mary Bickerdyke’s tireless efforts to legitimize herself as a professional caregiver and the ways in which she utilized her reputation as “Mother” to effectively accomplish those goals.

Visit Megan VanGorder's website.

--Marshal Zeringue