Memorial to Harriet Ward Foote Hawley

1. The Veterans of the Seventh Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers appointed a committee to consider how to commemorate Harriet Ward Foote Hawley on April 6, 1886.
2. On April 16, 1886, Stephen Walkley of the Veterans of the Seventh Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers addressed a letter to George Kellogg, chair, Asylum Hill Congregational Society committee, requesting that the society consider placing a memorial in honor of Harriet Ward Foote Hawley.

The memorial to Harriet Ward Foote Hawley was placed in the church on November 8, 1887.

1. “Some time ago it was stated that the veterans of the Seventh regiment, Conn. Vols., proposed to provide for some memorial to Mrs. General Hawley, to be placed in the Asylum Hill Congregational church, but no formal notice of the desires of the regiment came to the knowledge of the society’s committee until the reception of the following letter last week.”
2. “Of course no one was prepared to say without some study just what kind of a memorial might be most appropriate, and most desirable.”

Some details on Harriet Ward Foote Hawley:

• Wife of Joseph Hawley, who commanded the Seventh Regiment that honored her with this memorial and who went on to service as governor, US representative, and US senator for Connecticut.
• She joined Joseph and the Seventh Regiment at Beaufort, SC in the fall of 1862, and she entered active service as a “hospital visitor,” which is to say she was a nurse (I think – there was a trained corps of army nurses, but she wasn’t trained).
• In May 1864, she was put in charge of one of the largest wards at the Armory Square Hospital in Washington, which shared its space with an operating room. She stayed at the ward until September 1864, at which point her health required her to relinquish her position.
• She returned to the same position at Armory Square Hospital in November 1864 and stayed on until March 1865.
• She then joined Joseph in Wilmington, NC, and she went with him when he was transferred to Richmond, VA to serve as chief-of-staff to Alfred Terry.
• In October 1865, she traveled with an uncle to the Five Forks battlefield to help him find his son’s grave, but her ambulance overturned. She suffered severe injuries that left her in intense pain for many years after. 
• She returned to Hartford and then went with Joseph to Washington after he was elected senator.
• She died in Washington on March 3, 1886, of pneumonia.

Unattributed, “Proposed Memorial to Mrs. Hawley,” Hartford Daily Courant, June 25, 1886, page 2.