PRINGLE-MARTHA

AN  ORIGINAL  “SACRED  TWENTY”  NURSE

Prior to 1901 the U.S. military services employed the services of civilian female nurses to administer to the nursing needs of military personnel.  In 1901 the U.S. Army established the Army Nurse Corps to provide a professional nursing element within the Army.  The effort proved so successful that in May 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill authorizing the establishment of the Navy Nurse Corps and soon the Navy received numerous applications from female nurses who had graduated from accredited nursing schools and met the initial requirements of U.S. citizenship, unmarried, and between the ages of 22 and 44.  Twenty qualified nurses were selected in late 1908 and became the first members of the Navy Nurse Corps.  These women soon became known as the “Sacred Twenty.”

Martha Elizabeth Pringle was one of these women.  Historical records reveal she graduated in November 1898 from the Protestant Hospital Training School in St. Louis, Missouri.  Historical records are scarce concerning Pringle but do reveal she joined the Army Nurse Corps in the early 1900s, and was one of the nurses who left the Army to join the newly established Navy Nurse Corps.  Following initial assignment at the Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C. for training and nursing duty it appears she was assigned to the Naval Hospital, Mare Island, California.  A brief historical notice in early 1922 reports Pringle was next assigned to the Navy transport ship USS Chaumont which was then operating from San Francisco and Honolulu carrying personnel to U.S. possessions in the Western Pacific.  Available historical records fail to reveal Pringle’s following duty assignments, when she departed from the Navy, or her activities following her military duty.

Pringle died on June 29, 1940 in Sonoma County, California, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery where her grave headstone carries the inscription:  CHIEF NURSE  -  US NAVY.

                     

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)