Hygeia Hospital - Nora Black Sandford

Nora Black Sandford was born in Collierstown, Virginia on February 4th, 1884. A white woman able to benefit from educational privileges, after attending public school, she attended Polyclinic training school for nurses at the Polyclinic Hospital in Philadelphia, graduating in May of 1905. Few jobs were available to women in the first quarter of the 20th century, with one of the more common professions for women being nursing. Sanford served in a few different nursing roles prior to serving during World War I: she was a supervisor of Hygeia Hospital in Lynchburg, Virginia, at this location. She also worked the night shift at Jefferson Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, and was a supervisor of Westbrook Sanitorium in Richmond, Virginia. She was a member of the Roanoke Graduate Nurses Association.

On May 1st of 1918, Sandford was accepted for service to serve at Camp Jackson in South Carolina. While at Camp Jackson, Sandford worked in the segregated facilities in a ward of 30 African American pneumonia patients. She described them as "seriously ill with only two nurses and five corpsmen or orderlies as helping.” Using the idiom of the time, she described her work load as “heavy” yet enjoyable and her patients as “very humble” and “grateful and pitiful.” Later, she moved to the measles ward, where she described her patients as being “from the country” and “so generous and unselfish.” She was soon appointed a supervisor and stated her regret at not being in the ward long; she was there for less than three months. She describes her time at Camp Jackson as “most agreeable…the hospital was so efficiently managed it was a pleasure to do duty anywhere our living conditions were good – good food and comfortable.”

On August 23, 1918, Sandford left from Hoboken, New Jersey on the Adriatic, arriving in Liverpool before heading to Paris. There she was stationed at Base Hospital 45 & 87 at Toul, France. In France, her experience reflected the hardships of war in Europe. She states that they had “no equipment – food issued for only a day water a hundred yards from the old four story barracks we were using for a hospital – with hundreds of boys arriving right from the field day and night.” She served in another pneumonia ward, yet due to the lack of resources, all she could do was give them a meal and a place to rest. Despite this, she stated that those she was tending to were both wonderful and grateful to be receiving care after days without food and raising temperatures. 

Sandford returned back to New York on March 11, 1919. She was discharged on March 19, 1919. The location of her discharge is unknown. On her Virginia War History Questionnaire (a survey filled out for the state, which detailed her service), Sandford described her experience as different from many others, specifically because it was for nurses. This questionnaire asked several different questions, focusing less on battle and more on her broad experience. Most notable were her thoughts of the soldiers. She never described them as anything less than grateful: “they never complained would beg me to stay by them sometimes – I wonder particularly who would be perfectly quiet when a nurse was near. He was delirious of course but longed for the touch of human hands. Their wonderful unselfishness impressed me the most I believe and their fortitude we all hoped for the end of it all and to return to our own beloved land always and at all times.” After serving, Sandford continued as nurse, dying in her early 60s in 1943. 

Sandford, Nora Black. War History Commission State of Virginia Military Service Record. Library of Virginia, Virginia War History Commission.

Ancestry.com. U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.