"I am a Massachusetts woman"

Church Home and Hospital, formerly Washington Medical college, was where Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, and where many doctors were trained who served in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. On April 19, 1861, Adeline Blanchard Tyler, Episcopal Church deaconess and nursing instructor, was working here when a friend summoned her to the Holliday Street police station. The Baltimore Riot had just occurred and wounded 6th Massachusetts Infantry soldiers had been taken there. Tyler was refused entry until she said, "I am a Massachusetts woman seeking to do good to the citizens of my own state. If not allowed to do so, I must send a telegram to Governor Andrews informing him that my request has been denied." The police then admitted her.

Tyler found two soldiers dead and four wounded. Using a covered furniture wagon so the secessionist crowd could not see the soldiers, she brought the two most seriously injured here. After surgeons treated them, Tyler tended to them herself. In a month they had recovered enough to return to Massachusetts, where the legislature passed a resolution of appreciation for her services.

Later, Tyler helped establish a hospital in the National Hotel near Camden Station but was asked to leave when she insisted that Confederate and Union wounded receive the same care. She then served at the U.S. General Hospital in Chester, Pennsylvania, and organized nurses at a hospital at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

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