Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Portrait, Dorothea Dix. Women's Project of New Jersey Records. Renowned mental health advocate Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) served as superintendent of women nurses in the Union army, the highest office held by any woman during the war. Dix spent her last years in a private apartment in the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum in Trenton, the institution that she had helped to found. Photograph of portrait by Samuel Bell Waugh, Smithsonian Institution.

Type: Exhibition case

Name: Upholding the Home Front: New Jersey Women in the Civil War

Detail: New Jersey women quickly mobilized to support the war effort. They raised money, collected food, clothing, sheets, and blankets to ship to the troops, who often lacked needed supplies. Many towns organized ladies aid societies and church groups held fundraising bazaars. Other women struggled to keep farms and businesses afloat in the absence of male breadwinners, or labored for low wages in factories to support the war machine. Women often expressed their patriotism and suffering through poetry, songs, letters, and diaries.