USS HIGBEE
DDR / DD 806
1945 - 1979
Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee
USS Higbee (DD-806), commissioned in 1945, was named in her honor, the first U.S. Navy combat ship to bear the name of a female member of the Naval service. Mrs. Lenah S. Higbee was born in Chatham, New Brunswick. On 18 May 1874. She died in Winter Park, Florida, on 10 January 1941
Mrs. Higbee received her training and was graduated from the New York Post Graduate Hospital in 1899. Shortly after graduating she married Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Higbee U. S. Marine Corps. After his death she returned to her nursing career by taking a post graduate course at Fordham Hospital, New York.
At the office of Superintendent of Nurses
Lenah Higbee. With her is Miss Long, Secretary.
Lenah Higbee with her dog 'Jamie' at the Naval Hospital, Washington, D.C., circa 1915.
She was the second Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, from 20 January 1911 to 30 November 1922.In October 1908, she joined the newly-established U.S. Navy Nurse Corps as one of its first twenty members and was ordered to duty at the U. S. Naval Hospital, Washington, D. C. and was promoted to Chief Nurse in April 1909. and ordered to duty at the U. S. Naval Hospital, Norfolk, Va.
Her appointment as Superintendent, Navy Nurse Corps was made in January, 1911, at which time she reported for duty in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery at Washington D. C. She was honorably discharged from the Naval service in November, 1922. Chief Nurse Lenah H. Higbee died at Winter Park, Florida, on 10 January 1941.
In May 1908, after several years' advocacy by the Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Congress authorized the establishment of a female Nurse Corps within the United States Navy. By October, twenty women had been appointed to the Corps and were preparing for their initial assignments at several naval hospitals.
These nurses, who came to be called "The Sacred Twenty", were the first women to formally serve as members of the Navy. Representatives of one of the few professions then generally open to their gender, and one that had been growing in society's esteem for the previous half-century, Navy Nurses gradually expanded their number to 160 on the eve of World War I. In addition to normal hospital and clinic duties, they were active in training local nurses in U.S. overseas possessions and the Navy's male enlisted medical personnel. A few had seen brief service on board ship.
Group photograph of the first twenty Navy Nurses, appointed in 1908. Taken at the Naval Hospital, Washington, D.C., circa October 1908.
Present in the front row are (from left to right):
Mary H. Du Bose;
Adah M. Pendleton;
Elizabeth M. Hewitt;
Della V. Knight;
Josephine Beatrice Bowman, the third Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1922-1935;
Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee, the second Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1911-1922;
Esther Voorhees Hasson, the first Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1908-1911 ;
Martha E. Pringle;
Elizabeth J. Wells; and
Clare L. De Ceu.
In the back row are (left to right):
Elizabeth Leonhardt;
Estelle Hine;
Ethel R. Parsons;
Florence T. Milburn;
Boniface T. Small;
Victoria White;
Isabelle Rose Roy;
Margaret D. Murray;
Sara B. Myer; and
Sara M. Cox.
(The last two named are on a lower step than the rest of the back row)
Awards held by Mrs. Higbee were the Victory Medal, and the Navy Cross " For distinguished service in the line of her profession, and unusual and conspicuous devotion to duty as Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps".
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Revised: 10/09
