Nancy J. McConnel Photographs (SCV-9)

Nancy McConnel was born January 25, 1881, in Caldwell, Idaho, and died July 15, 1966, in Salida, Colorado. She lived in Idaho and in Wayne County, Iowa, until she was six years old, when she moved with her family by covered wagon to the San Luis Valley, Colorado. After graduating from Monte Vista High School, she went to Iowa for nurse’s training. She completed training at the Centerville Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1907. For the next three years, she had private cases in that general vicinity.

From September 1910 until spring 1917, she continued on private cases, at first in the San Luis Valley and later in Cheraw and Merino, Colorado. In September 1918, she joined the Army Nurses Corps during World War I and was stationed at Fort Douglas, Utah. Her service there included the time of the terrible influenza epidemic. In the early 1920s, she worked at a small sanitarium in Caldwell, Idaho, and as head nurse at a small hospital in Moab, Utah.

Moving to New Jersey in the fall of 1925, she worked in hospitals in Lakewood, Vineland, and Mt. Holly, until the fall of 1931. During the next 17 years, she was a night nurse at the infirmary of the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She retired from nursing in 1948 and spent the rest of her life in Colorado.