(soft music) - [Narrator] Long before there was a Milwaukee soldiers home, the national landmark for veterans at risk for homelessness, there was the West Side Soldiers Aid Society.

And, a group of young women including Lydia Ely Hewitt, Fanny Burling Buttrick, and Hannah Vetter led the way in caring for Civil War soldiers in need.

- I think...

They weren't feminists, they wouldn't have known what to do with that word.

But, they certainly believed in their own ability and responsibility to do something for the soldiers.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] In the early stages of the Civil War, Milwaukee women began to organize.

On October 19th, 1861, a meeting was called here, in the basement of Summerfield Methodist Church to launch the Milwaukee Ladies' Association for the Aid of Military Hospitals.

As time went on, different volunteer groups started forming.

As one historian of the time said, "The most important auxiliary society in the city was the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society."

Organized December 15th, 1862.

It's members included Lydia Ely Hewitt, Fanny Burling Buttrick, Hannah Pierce Vetter, and Martha Reed Mitchell.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Jim Peck.

Welcome to I Remember.

Joining me tonight is Patricia Lynch.

In 2003, she co-founded the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society.

It was a rebirth of the Milwaukee Women's Organization, formed during the Civil War to provide care for veterans.

In the 1860's, their fundraising efforts helped support the establishment of a national soldiers' home.

This was put in the Milwaukee Sentinel back in... Somewhere around the 1860's, by the women of the West Side Women's Soldiers' Aid Society.

And, it goes as follows, "When the contest for right is over and the thousands of sturdy sons of Wisconsin return from the havoc of battle, maimed, crippled, and helpless for life, a home of magnificent proportions for which we have not marble white enough, must be built.

This temporary resting place may prove the cornerstone of a permanent home for our battle-scarred heroes for all time to come."

- The women were creating a temporary home, it's on Plankinton, that was West Water Street, between Wisconsin and Wells.

They started with one storefront at 207 West Water, and eventually rented four or five more.

- [Jim] And, what did they do there?

- [Patricia] They had beautiful living quarters.

So, they were caring for the sick, feeding the men as they passed through, giving vocational counseling and locational assistance, bailing the men out of jail.

- Where'd they get the money to do this?

- They were prominent young women of Milwaukee.

Well, for example, Alexander Mitchell was one of their supporters, and they just threw- - [Jim] Was his wife involved in that?

- [Patricia] She was.

She was apart of almost every effort in Milwaukee.

- In certain ways, they're doing what they know.

But having said that, I think the kind of effort that led to this soldiers' home is an example of women sort of transcending limitations.

Exerting some... Power isn't quite the word for it, agency we might call it...

Onto society, and really shaping the way this home took...

Became a reality.

- [Narrator] Our reenactors portraying Lydia and Fanny, are back to explain why they got involved with the contemporary West Side Soldiers' Aid Society.

- My name is Terry Arliskas, and I'm here with Debra Keinert, to talk about the resurrected West Side Soldiers' Aid Society.

The society was reformed in 2003 by Patricia Lynch, who lived in Greenville, Wisconsin.

- And I, Debra Keinert, had worked in the Civil War reenactments as a Civil War nurse, and I worked in close conjunction with the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society.

- [Terry] In 2005, we got hooked up with a company of marines that were stationed in a very remote part of Afghanistan.

And, actually fed them for nine months.

- [Narrator] Marine, Terrence Patrick McGowan, received some of those care packages, and he wrote about it in his book, The Silence of War.

- [Terrence] "The irony struck me light a thunderbolt.

There we were, fighting in the most modern war to date, with technology I couldn't have dreamed of thirty-five years prior when I was an active-duty Marine, being supported with food and essentials by the Civil War Soldiers' Aid Society.

The past and present, the Civil War and the Afghanistan War, collided and coalesced at a tiny, obscure military post in the western Afghanistan desert.

The conduit between the two conflicts was the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society.

Helping hands had reached across time."

- During the run of the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society, we raised over 8 thousand dollars, that went to a variety of different causes.

All of which supported our veterans.

- And, of course, at that time I had my own son serving in the service, spending some time in Iraq, so I think that my heart was always partnered with your cause, and we did send a lot to those soldiers.

- [Terry] We certainly did.

And, I got involved, I was a veteran myself.

My father was a WW2 and Korean War veteran, he and my mother are both buried at Wood National Cemetery.

- [Debra] The West Side Soldiers' Aid Society, currently it is disbanded.

Of course, COVID had a lot to do with that.

But, it's gonna take another Lydia and another Fanny to resurrect it this time.

But, you know, when my son came back from the war in Iraq, he was watching us continuing to carry on in our Civil War garb, and remembering our soldiers, and he said something very poignant to me.

He said, "You know, when I see you remembering soldiers' who fought all that many years ago, it gives me hope that in the future they will not forget the sacrifices that we made, and the lost fallen that we had to leave behind.

It gives us hope of being remembered."

- [Terry] And, I think the ladies' would be pleased that one of the last actions of the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society was taking the money that we still had in our town, and donating that to the refurbished Soldiers' Home, and the Women's Wing.

For women, veterans and their children.

- [Narrator] These women in the society raised even more money to bring a permanent Soldiers' Home to Milwaukee.

They did it by organizing a fair.

We'll take you there on the next The Women Founders: Milwaukee Soldiers' Home.

(upbeat music)