(1881-1948)
Chief nurse of American Red Cross Nursing (1918—1919) and director of nursing for the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. Julia Catherine Stimson was born in 1881 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was educated in St. Louis, Missouri, and in New York City and graduated from Vassar College in 1901. She entered nursing school in 1904 at New York Hospital and after graduation in 1908 worked at the Harlem Hospital in New York. From there she went to the Washington University Hospital in St. Louis. In 1917 she joined the Army Nurse Corps and was named chief nurse of Base Hospital No. 21. She also served in that capacity in the British Expeditionary Forces Hospital No. 12 in Rouen, France. In April 1918 Stimson was appointed chief nurse of the American Red Cross in France and director of nursing of the American Expeditionary Forces. She supervised more than 10,000 nurses. She became dean of the Army School of Nursing in Washington, D.C., and superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps in 1919. In 1920, when nurses in the army were given relative rank, Stimson became the first woman to hold the rank of major. She was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the U.S. government, the British Royal Red Cross 1st Class, the French Medaille de la Reconnaissance Fran^aise and the Medaille d’Honneur de l’Hygiene Publique, and the International Red Cross Florence Nightingale Medal.
A group of Red Cross nurses headed by the late Colonel Julia Stimson, Army Nurse Corps, during a parade in Paris, France, ca. 1920.
Stimson retired from the army in 1937 but continued in her work for the profession of nursing as president of the American Nursing Association from 1938 to 1944. She returned to active duty to assist with the recruiting of nurses during World War II. When army nurses were granted full rank she was promoted to colonel (retired) just six weeks before she died in September 1948.
