Phoebe Yates Pember

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember (August 18, 1823 – March 4, 1913) was an American nurse and female administrator of Chimborazo Hospital at Richmond, Virginia. She was from a prominent Jewish family from Charleston, South Carolina. She assumed the responsibility informally at the age of 39 and eventually over 15,000 patients came under her direct care during the war.

Family and early life

Pember was born on August 18, 1823, and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. The fourth of seven children, she was raised in a wealthy and socially prominent Jewish family; her father, Jacob Clavius Levy (son of Moses Levy of Charleston), was a successful merchant, while her mother, Fanny Yates, was the seventh and youngest daughter of Samuel Yates and Martha Abrahams. One of Pember's sisters, Eugenia Levy, married lawyer and congressman Philip Phillips, and would later be twice imprisoned for her support of the Confederate cause. Exemplifying the way in which wealth enabled some antebellum Jewish families to gain full community acceptance, the Levy family moved among Charleston's elite until a series of financial setbacks sent them to Savannah, Georgia, in the late 1840s.

Marriage

Pember apparently received some formal schooling before her 1856 marriage to Bostonian Thomas Pember, who was not Jewish. He died soon after their marriage and by late 1861 she was a childless widow, living with her parents in Marietta, Georgia, where they had fled to escape the ravages of war. Unhappy at home, Pember accepted an invitation to serve at Richmond's Chimborazo Hospital. She reported for duty in December 1862.