Phoebe Pember

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember (August 18, 1823 – March 4, 1913) was an American nurse and female administrator of Chimborazo Hospital at Richmond, Virginia.

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.

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.

Although Pember had to thwart efforts by her staff to pilfer supplies, once reportedly threatening a would-be thief with a gun, she also seems to have been accepted and valued by patients.

Before the allotment became her charge, she wrote in her memoir: "daily inspection... convinced me that great evils still existed under my rule, in spite of my zealous care for my patients.

[6] Following the Civil War, Pember maintained her elite social status, and traveled extensively through the United States and Europe.

In her last years she lived with her niece, Fanny Phillips Hill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and died on March 4, 1913, of breast cancer at the age of 89.