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1888 — organized nursing for "the sick poor of Ft Wayne"
Founding: In 1888 a group of Fort Wayne women organized the Ladies Relief Union with a stated mission: "to help the sick poor of Ft Wayne." Calling themselves the Visiting Nurse Committee, they discovered, in the Indiana Historical Bureau's summary, the link between poverty and disease. Dr. Jessie Calvin, a Fort Wayne sanitation pioneer, encouraged the women's church groups to raise money for a qualified nurse who could meet the community's needs — the seed of the Fort Wayne Visiting Nurse service, which grew over the following century into a staff of more than 155 with over 170 volunteers.
Why it stands here: The visiting-nurse movement was the point where Fort Wayne benevolence turned professional: relief given not as alms but as skilled care in the home, organized by women a decade before the public library fight was won. The entry is brief because the published record reached is brief; the Visiting Nurse archives, cited by the Historical Bureau, are the unmined source.
Sources:
- Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana History Blog, "poverty" — the Ladies Relief Union of 1888, the Visiting Nurse Committee, Dr. Jessie Calvin, and the modern scale of Fort Wayne Visiting Nurse.