Dita Hopkins Kinney (September 13, 1855 – April 16, 1921) was the first superintendent of the

United States Army Nurse Corps The United States Army Nurse Corps (USANC) was formally established by the U.S. Congress in 1901. It is one of the six medical special branches (or "corps") of officers which – along with medical enlisted soldiers – comprise the Army Medica ...

, serving from 1901 to 1909.

Early life

Dita Hopkins was born in New York City and raised in California, the daughter of C. T. Hopkins and Myra Burnett Hopkins. She attended

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California is part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was relocated to Oakland in ...

. As a young widow, she trained as a nurse at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

.Mary T. Sarnecky
"Mrs. Dita H. Kinney:1st Superintendent, Army Nurse Corps"
Army Nurse Corps Association.

Career

Kinney worked as a nurse in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and California, before she became an army nurse in 1898. She was first assigned to the hospital at the

Presidio of San Francisco The Presidio of San Francisco (originally, El Presidio Real de San Francisco or The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis) is a park and former U.S. Army post on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, and is part ...

. She also worked with tubercular patients at

Fort Bayard, New Mexico Fort Bayard is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community, in Grant County, New Mexico, Grant County, New Mexico, United States. History In 1888, Kentuckian chaplain Allen Allensworth moved with his regiment to Fort Bayard, becoming a mi ...

. In 1901, she became superintendent of the United States Army Nursing Corps. In that year, she was called "perhaps the most conspicuous woman in the nursing profession today". Her work included lecture and inspection tours of army hospitals in the United States and abroad. She resigned the superintendency in 1909. Kinney left active nursing for health reasons in 1914, but taught

American Red Cross The American National Red Cross is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit Humanitarianism, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. Clara Barton founded ...

nurses during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

Personal life

Dita Hopkins married Mark Kinney in 1874,"Woman's World"
''Portsmouth Herald'' (January 9, 1902): 3. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...

and had one son before she was widowed in 1878. She died in 1921, aged 65 years, in

Bangor, Maine Bangor ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's List of municipalities in Maine, third-most populous city, behind Portland, Maine, Portland ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinney, Dita Hopkins 1855 births 1921 deaths American nurses American women nurses American women in World War I Health professionals from New York City 20th-century American people