[2] She completed nurses' training at the New York Post-Graduate Hospital in 1899 and entered private practice soon thereafter.

[4] In October 1908, she joined the newly established U.S. Navy Nurse Corps as one of its first twenty members.

These nurses, who came to be called "The Sacred Twenty", were the first women to formally serve as members of the Navy.

[7] For her achievements in leading the Corps through the First World War, Chief Nurse Higbee was the first woman awarded the Navy Cross.

Navy nurses Marie Louise Hidell, Lillian M. Murphy and Edna E. Place were also awarded the Navy Cross in 1920 for their World War I service, but these women all received the award posthumously after having succumbed to the Spanish flu, which they contracted while caring for hospital patients.