Cornelia
Elizabeth Thornton
(1893~1918)
By Roger C. Davis
Cornelia
Elizabeth Thornton (19 May 1893-28 Sept. 1918) was a World War I casualty
from Bena, VA. Cornelia was the eldest daughter of eight children of
Harry Lee and Virginia Lee Rowe Thornton, Sr. of the Thornton Creek area
of Achilles in Gloucester County, VA. (Cornelia was the aunt of Ginny
Snowden, who is currently branch manager of Gloucester Point Library, and
also, of Ed Thornton, GGSV member.)
She was “one of
three students that made up the first graduating class from Achilles High
School in 1914.” 1 After high school she went to nursing
school at Franklin Square Hospital in Baltimore, MD, where she earned her
nursing degree in 1917. 2
Cornelia (or Nellie
as she was known to her friends) had the misfortune of contracting flu on
the voyage over the Atlantic to England. This turned into pneumonia and
led to her death on 28 September 1918 at U. S. Army Base #58, AEF, in
Portsmouth, England. She was the first American nurse to die in the war
after the United States entered the conflict. Eleven other Gloucester
residents were among the estimated 116,708 American lives lost.” 3
She was first buried at a church in Winchester, England “with full
military honors to which an army officer is entitled”.
The 27 May 1920
Mathews Journal notes “the bodies of 10 women war nurses, who died while
on duty with the overseas forces, and the first to be brought home, will
arrive Sunday at New York on the Steamer Princess Matoaka. Among them is
Miss Cornelia Thornton of Achilles.” 4 She was buried in
Arlington National Cemetery.
1. Gloucester-Mathews
Gazette-Journal, 11 Nov. 1993, p. 1A & 13A.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
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