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| Army Nurse Corps Uniform, 1917 |
I agreed to coordinate a yearlong writing program for the Seattle Genealogical Society. While I don't have everything plotted out for the entire year yet, I do know I want to offer writing prompts for those who are interested. I am a big fan of Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks guided writing practice and wanted to do something similar on a smaller scale. Our group will meet ten times in 2026, so I picked ten topics at random as writing prompts. Very random!
The first prompt, OUTFIT, is inspired by the book Love, Loss, and What I Wore by Ilene Beckerman. Do you have memories of an outfit you wore to an event? Do you have a wedding dress, baby clothes, or other heirlooms passed down in your family? Rather than write about something from my family, I am going to take this topic in a different direction!
I have been researching the history of Base Hospital 50, a World War I hospital unit, since 2016, in particular the stories of the unit's 104 nurses, many of whom were from the Pacific Northwest. Through a Facebook group I am a member of, Army Nurse Corps, 1917-1919, I connected with a collector who purchased the uniform of one of those nurses, Minnie Andrews West. In the course of our conversation about Minnie and her uniform, we connected with a member of the American Society of Military Insignia Collectors (ASMIC) who recognized that the shoulder patch on Minnie's uniform was particularly rare.
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Base Hospital 50 was organized by the University of Washington (UW) in 1917, and largely staffed by physicians, nurses, and enlisted men from the Pacific Northwest. Shoulder insignia, or unit patches, didn't come into use until World War I, and there was an approval process for designs to be authorized. The purple and gold insignia for Base Hospital 50 (BH50), echoing the colors of the UW and its iconic W, was never officially authorized, and the patches weren't distributed until after the war ended. As a result, there are few photos of BH50 personnel with the patch on their left sleeve. Most of the nurses had photos taken in uniform before embarking to serve abroad. Bringing together the three threads, I was fortunate to collaborate with the two collectors and publish an article about Minnie and her uniform in the Trading Post, the collector's magazine published by ASMIC.
The article goes into Minnie's life story, but for this post, I wanted to focus a bit more on the uniforms worn by members of the Army Nurse Corps. Although there were enlisted nurses in the U.S. Army by 1917, the large numbers of nurses needed during World War I were organized under the auspices of the Red Cross, which provided specific uniform regulations.
The regular uniform of the American-trained nurse consisted of:
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| High-necked serge dress worn by Chief Nurse Julia Stimson. |
- Dark blue Norfolk suit, black buttons
- Dark blue high-necked serge dress
- Long dark blue double-breasted coat, black buttons
- Dark blue silk blouse, high-necked
- White silk and cotton blouses, high-necked
- Dark blue velour hat for winter
- Black straw hat for summer
- Nurses who have the long dark blue capes are permitted to wear them, but they are not to be thrown open in order to show the red lining.
- On the lapel of the coat, “U.S.” and a caduceus with a small red cross.
- Red Cross Nurse badge pin
As pictured above, a Norfolk suit was a long, fitted jacket with patch pockets and a gored skirt. Underneath, most women wore a white blouse or "shirtwaist" with lace-up boots. Abercrombie & Fitch, then an upscale sporting goods store provided uniforms for many women who served during WWI.
How Minnie's uniform ended up in the hands of a collector in Canada, to be sold to another Army nurse enthusiast and historian half a world away, is unknown, but it is so exciting that her uniform survived, with the unexpected bonus of her BH50 shoulder sleeve insignia!
Copyright 2026 by Lisa A. Oberg, GeneaGator: Vignettes of Yesteryear. All Rights Reserved.
