[3][4] Florence Aby Blanchfield was born in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the fourth of eight children of Mary Louvenia (née Anderson), a nurse, and Joseph Plunkett Blanchfield, a mason and stonecutter.

In 1909, she was superintendent of a training school at Suburban General Hospital, in Bellevue, Pennsylvania.

In 1913, she worked as an operating room nurse and an anesthetist at the Ancon Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.

She returned to civilian life for a period after the end of the War, but was drawn back to active service.

During World War II, she also saw the rapid growth of the ANC from several hundred members to more than 50,000.