Gibbons traveled to Washington, D.C., to
help at the
Washington Office Hospital, where she
soon took
charge, helping
the wounded and distributing supplies
from the New
York Relief Agency. She also established
two field
hospitals: in
Strasburg and Falls Church, Va. When a
site opened
for the government at Point Lookout,
Md., a hotel
and 100 cottages
were refurbished to create an elaborate
hospital
complex with accommodations for 1,500
soldiers. It
was named the U.S.
Hammond General Hospital, after Surgeon
General
William A. Hammond. At Hammond General,
Gibbons
clashed with a woman
as aggressive and committed as herself;
Superintendent of Nurses Dorothea Dix.
Dix and
Gibbons vied for control of the
hospital, and Gibbons succeeded in
being appointed
its head matron.
Gibbons served conscientiously at the
institution,
punctuating her career once again with
controversy.
She was accused
of siphoning hospital supplies to the
"contrabands," or runaway slaves who
came into the
hospital. Further, she refused
to return the runaways to their owners.
She left
Hammond General in 1863 when the site
was converted
into Point Lookout Prison.
Born in New York to an abolitionist
Quaker
family, Abigail Gibbons grew up in a
home that often
harbored slaves
on their way to freedom. Gibbons was
also a medical
nurse who brought the social convictions
she learned
at home to
her medical and administrative duties.
When the
U.S. Sanitary Commission was established
in 1861 to
oversee the
recruitment of much needed nurses and
ensure
adequate medical care to the Union
wounded, Gibbons
was selected to serve.
The Commission set up a training base
for the
female recruits at David's Island
Hospital in New
York, and Gibbons was
among them.