Jessie R. McDowell was born on Wednesday, March 12, 1890 in Buffalo, Erie County, New York. The names of her parents are unknown but it is believed they both died when she was young. She did have an older brother, Dr. Hugh C. McDowell born in 1888. Records show he was born in Wichita, Kansas. An aunt, Irene Potter who lived in Buffalo shows up in both of their lives. It is known that Jessie and her parents moved to Oakdale, Louisiana sometime after 1900.

She trained to be a nurse at Mary Gales Hospital, Port Arthur, Texas and in the 1910 census she is living in a boarding house in Beaumont, Jefferson County, Texas and employed as a Hospital Nurse. City directories continue to show her residence in Beaumont up to July 19, 1918 when Jessie entered active duty as an Army Nurse.

In her late twenties, the United States declared war on Germany, April 6, 1917 and entered the World War that had been raging in Europe since 1914. Obviously, doctors and nurses would be needed. With only 403 nurses in the Army Nurse Corps [ANC] when the war began, the Surgeon General called for volunteers. Women in hospitals and private duty as well as many in training responded. Those already staffing hospitals could join the ANC through the Army’s newly established base hospital system and through the American Red Cross. By the end of the war, 21,480 women served in the Army Nurse Corps rendering service “beyond expectations” at a time when women were not even allowed to vote”.

Jessie was assigned to the US Army Base Hospital, Camp MacArthur, Waco, Texas. Also known as Fort MacArthur, it served as an Army training base located on a 10,699 acre tract of land in northwest Waco. Loretta Johnston who served as a nurse there during this time described it as “very pleasing to the eye and a pleasant place for the sick and convalescent soldiers”. Making the 267 mile trip to Waco by train no doubt, she began her duties of caring for hospitalized men of the Great War. There were also many in training who had not yet made it to the war and were sick from the 1918 flu pandemic.

Jessie herself fell sick from the epidemic and died of pneumonia on Friday, October 11, 1918 after 84 days of active duty. Her brother First Lieutenant Hugh McDowell was at this time serving as an Army Medical Doctor in France with Base Hospital # 23 and would not return until February 1919. Jessie’s body was sent to Oakdale, Louisiana where she was buried on October 16, 1918.

A Hero Who Died For Humanity’s Sake – Day is done, God is nigh.

(Sources: Documents found at Ancestry.com; Newspapers.com; Family Search.org; Wikipedia.com)