Rebecca Pomroy was one of the most pivotal personalities in history.

By DL Fowler

Lincoln’s Angel

Hi there — what a privilege to be invited by one of my favorite author friends to introduce you to a magnificent woman from history who literally saved the American Union from collapse! For eight-score years, her story has remained buried in history’s crypt of forgotten truths. 

I’m DL Fowler, the award-winning author of the Abraham Lincoln Lost Stories Series. I’ve worked the past several years to unearth this remarkable woman’s story and just launched a Kickstarter campaign to share what I discovered. 

Every aspect of this project has been a challenge—as if some invisible hand doesn’t want her story to be told. But when I find a story that should be on people’s lips, I am like a dog on a bone. Now that her story been exhumed, it deserves to reach every heart and hearthstone of the nation. 

Rebecca Pomroy was one of the most pivotal personalities in history. She was a Civil War Army nurse who saved President and Mrs. Lincoln from debilitating grief after 11-year-old Willie Lincoln died during the darkest days of the war. At the same time, she was the sole caregiver in a 90-bed hospital ward of wounded, sick, and dying soldiers. The president often escorted her on her commutes between the White House and the hospital.  

Her’s is a tale of resilience, deep friendship, and the power of the human spirit to overcome the darkest tragedies. No other person was better prepared by the trials of affliction to shepherd the Lincolns through the valley of death they traversed.  

Rebecca Pomroy is not just a legend in my own mind. 

From The Boston Globe, April 17, 1904: She was frequently the staff upon which he leaned during days and weeks of sorrow and uncertainty. 

President Lincoln told her one morning at breakfast in the family’s private dining room, when you are an old woman, please tell your grandchildren how greatly indebted the nation is to you for holding up my hands in times of trouble. 

Dorthea Dix, Superintendent of Female Army Nurses, called her, the best nurse in my corps.  

Navy Secretary Gideon Welles told her, the many trials of the president were better known to you than to his countrymen. 

Mary Tod Lincoln became notoriously jealous whenever her husband showed attention to another woman, but she called Rebecca Pomroy, my sister.  

This is how my obsession began. Her journal was stolen—twice.  

She started keeping a journal in October 1861 when she arrived in Washington DC. While in Boston on furlough during September 1863, the journal was stolen and hasn’t been seen since. Its pages covered her times in residence at the White House when she slept in a guest suite across the hall from President and Mrs. Lincoln.  

She immediately started another journal that survived for decades until it was stolen around the dawn of the twenty-first century. It has never resurfaced.  

Kickstarter rewards include: 

• a replica of the second journal—how I pulled off that feat is a story by itself. Backers who select that reward or add-on can read the rest of the story. 

• limited edition sequentially numbered challenge coins 

Please check out my Kickstarter page: