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Phoebe Yates Pember
1823–1913
A Southern woman who became one of the Confederacy’s best-known hospital matrons, she left a vivid first-person account of wartime medicine in Richmond. Her memoir offers a rare view of Civil War hospitals through the eyes of someone who managed them from the inside.
1 Audiobook
A Southern Woman's Story
by Phoebe Yates Pember
About the author
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, Phoebe Yates Pember came from a prominent Jewish family. During the Civil War, she served as matron of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, one of the largest military hospitals of the era, supervising wards, nurses, and daily operations in an intensely difficult setting.
Pember later wrote A Southern Woman’s Story, a memoir based on her wartime experience. The book is valued for its direct, observant picture of hospital life, including the strain of caring for wounded soldiers and the practical authority she exercised in a male-dominated world.
She died in 1913. Today, she is remembered both for her unusual leadership during the war and for leaving behind one of the most distinctive personal accounts of Confederate medical care.