Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins – Nurse, Confederate States of America

by

Born at Jefferson County, Virginia, May 7, 1818, she married Commodore Alexander Gordon in 1837 (he died in 1849). She married a second time to Judge Arthur F. Hopkins in 1854. During the Civil War, she established hospitals in Richmond, Virginia, in 1861 and established the Matron Alabama Hospitals.

She was once wounded while rescuing casualties at the Battle of Seven Pines. Her portrait appears on the 25-cent piece and the Fifty-dollar bills issues by Alabama in the Civil War. She was known as the “Florence Nightingale of the South.”

Her second husband, who served as a justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was named State Hospital Agent in 1861, but it was the intent that she carry out those duties (sexism in the Civil War?).

She often went into the field during the War and the wound that she received at Seven Pines left her with a permanent limp. Robert E. Lee praised her work with the wounded.

She died while visiting her daughter in Washington, D.C. on May 9, 1890, and was buried in the gravesite of her son-in-law, General Romeyn Beck Ayers (who had preceded her in death) in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery.  It was not until 1987 that a stone was erected over the spot where she is buried.

HOPKINS, JULIET ANN

  • DATE OF BIRTH: 05/07/1818
  • DATE OF DEATH: 03/09/1890
  • DATE OF INTERMENT: 03/12/1890
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 1  SITE 12

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
MOTHER IN LAW OF AYERS, ROMEYN  US ARMY

HOPKINS, JULIET OPIE M/O ROMEYN BECK AYRES

  • DATE OF DEATH: 03/09/1890
  • DATE OF INTERMENT: Unknown
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 1  SITE 12

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
MOTHER IN LAW OF RB AYRES BREV MAJ  GEN

jopikin2

Photo Courtesy of the Alabama State
Department of Archives And History.

jaohopkins-100302-mrp

jhopkins

Read our general and most popular articles

Leave a Comment