Abigail Graves: Meigs County’s GI Nightingale.

It’s said to be better to be thought a fool and keep your mouth closed than to open it and erase all doubt. That is certainly the case for the Washington State Senator who made the remarks about nurses playing cards for most of their work day. The blatant audacity and falsity of this accusation is astounding. These comments have brought me to this week’s article about one of Meigs County’s prominent nurses, of whom many do not know: Abigail B. Graves, originally from Downington.

Abigail was born to Oscar and Mytra Graves, and as a young woman she joined the A.N.C. (Army Nurse Corps) to help serve her country in World War I. She is said to have “a record of which any woman would be proud.” As a Lieutenant in the ANC, Lt. Graves’ travel log during the First World War included stents at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, Camp Beauregard in Louisiana, Camp Shelly in Mississippi, all in 1918. In 1919 Lt. Graves was stationed in Fort McPherson in Georgia and Fort Thomas in Kentucky.

Then in 1920, Lt. Graves was sent to Coblentz, Germany. In an interview that ran in the former Meigs County newspaper The Democrat, which was provided to the newspaper by Jeanette Ash, who was a Senior in the Class of 1943 at Pomeroy High School, Lt. Graves had this to say about her tenure in Germany: “In the first occupation (November 1918) were men who had been in France. In two years most of

Article source: https://www.mydailysentinel.com/news/39018/abigail-graves-meigs-countys-g-i-nightingale