The Mystery Behind Rachel Ferguson

The Mystery Behind Rachel Ferguson

The photo is dated 1893. Nine young Vassar Brothers Hospital nurses are seated with the head nurse, smiling (or the 19^th century equivalent to smiling) for a group photo. The names of the nurses are all listed on the back of the original photo, however, the occasion of the photo is missing, and the name of the nurse seated in between two other nurses, at the bottom right, is listed as “unknown.” Through intense research with my supervisor, Mary Jo Russell, we concluded that this nurse is most likely Rachel Ferguson, who graduated in 1896.

History Behind the Photograph

A few years back, Mary Jo Russell, received a phone call from the administration office about a box found on a shelf. Upon receiving the cardboard box, she found that the box only contained annual reports, however, as she emptied it she noticed this photo at the bottom. After discovering the photo, she immediately asked the administration office if they knew about the photo or who donated the box, to which they had no answer to.

To make matter worse, the photo had intense water damage and was already developing mold on the upper left-hand corner. As a result, the photo was sent to a conservator for the Museum of Modern Art, where the image was cleaned and preserved. This process took two months. However, in order to lift the stain that was left by the mold, Mary Jo then had the image sent to a professional photographer, where the photo was scanned and retouched, giving us the pristine image that we have today in the VBMC archives.

Identifying the “unknown” nurse

So, this is where my role in the mystery comes into the picture. One day as I am scanning and uploading photographs to “Content Dm”, Mary Jo pulls out this photograph and tells me about the ongoing mystery with this nurse. As she is telling me the history of the image, she also mentions that many have tried to identify this nurse to no avail. As a result, she then suggests that I should try to solve the mystery, and of course, I happily agreed.

A few weeks later we both sat down and tried to identify this nurse. Mary Jo had a list of nurses where she narrowed the possible nurses down to three names. We started off our research by doing a search on “Family Tree”, a website similar to “Ancestry.com.” On this website, you are able to look up the names of people, and essentially you can see their family trees and census records, through a separate search function. The first two names that we tried didn’t come back with any relevant searches. However, when we searched the name “Rachel J. Ferguson”, we found a person with that name who was born and lived in the Hudson Valley. We then decided to look up census records that would possibly confirm or provide more clues into this person. The first census that came up was the 1910 Census, and on this census, Rachel Ferguson was boarding with two other women, Martha Karnofski and Cornelia Ferguson. This particular search/information made us literally scream with joy because Martha and Cornelia are both graduates of VBH School of Nursing; AND Martha is also in the photo and SITTING to the left of the unknown nurse in the photograph. However, Cornelia is not in the group photo. At this point Mary Jo was pretty satisfied with our research and sort of wrote this unknown nurse off as Rachel, however, I wanted to go even further, and try to figure out more information about this nurse. As I was looking through a pamphlet that contains the names of all the graduates from VBH, I noticed that Cornelia Ferguson was listed in the book (something we didn’t realize at first), so we ultimately concluded that Rachel and Cornelia were either sisters or cousins. As a result, we decided to put Cornelia’s name into “Family search”, and found a family tree that listed Rachel J. Ferguson AS HER SISTER. Obviously, this confirmed that Cornelia and Rachel were related, however, it still doesn’t confirm that the nurse in the photo is Rachel because we didn’t have a photograph with a name to confirm this. However, Mary Jo suddenly remembered at that moment that she had a photo of Cornelia Ferguson; and the unknown nurse and Cornelia are undoubtedly related. They have very similar features, thus confirming that the unknown nurse in the photo is most likely Rachel Ferguson. Overall, through this intense investigation and research, Mary Jo and I are 98% sure that we solved the mystery behind Rachel Ferguson.