2 Quotes & Sayings By Lydia Dare
Lydia Dare was born in Connecticut in 1811. She moved to Maine to live with an aunt and attended the local school where she met her future husband. She taught school for a time, but after one year she decided to move to New York City where she began to work as a nurse. It was in this role that she encountered Dr
Samuel Latham Mitchill, who was then working at Bellevue Hospital. Mitchill recognized her potential and placed her on his staff as his assistant, with the title of "Assistant Superintendent of Nurses." She worked for Mitchill for over twenty years, becoming his personal secretary and confidante. When he died in 1866, she inherited his estate.
After living comfortably for several years, she donated the remainder of the estate to found the pioneering Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing. The hospital’s first building was constructed in 1867 on what is now Park Avenue at East Eighty-Sixth Street in Manhattan.