Saint of the Week: Adeline Blanchard Tyler
11/5/2025
Adeline Blanchard Tyler
1805 – 1875
Deaconess, Nurse, Missionary, Activist
Adeline Blanchard Tyler was an American nurse, missionary, and activist, noted especially for her work during the American Civil War. She was a longtime Boston resident and a prominent Episcopal parishioner. Husband John Tyler, 26 years her senior, encouraged her to remain active within the Episcopal community. After his death in 1853, Adeline travelled to Germany and enrolled in the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses’ Institute. There, she studied nursing, an experience which would have a major impact on her work in the church. On 4 November 1856, Adeline, Caroline Elizabeth Guild, Eveline Black, and Catherine Minard became the first Episcopal deaconesses in the United States. Providing nursing care, religious and practical education, material support, and advocacy at the newly established St. Andrew's Infirmary in Baltimore, they cared for men, women, and children, regardless of race, and would become known as the United Deaconesses of Maryland. Adeline pursued her job zealously, although some church folk thought she was “too charitable.” Her authority was undermined when the church created a new leadership position and selected a male to manage the infirmary. Resigning from her position, she continued in a lesser capacity, training apprentice deaconesses. When the American Civil War began, Baltimore endured an extended period of unrest. Maryland remained loyal to the Union, but the city had a large pro-Confederate population. This sparked the Baltimore riot of April 1861, during which Tyler tirelessly tended wounded Union soldiers, lodging many in her home. Most of them were Massachusetts soldiers, prompting state’s House of Representatives to cite her formally for such noble service. Adeline was then asked to head the Camden Street Hospital in Baltimore, ministering to both Union and Confederate soldiers with an evenhandedness that sparked claims that she was "a Rebel sympathizer." At Dorothea Dix’s request, Adeline took charge of the Chester, Pennsylvania military hospital. Colleagues included volunteer nurses from Maine and Massachusetts, often tending up to 1,000 men at a time. In 1863, Adeline oversaw the Naval Academy military hospital with the same nursing cohort who had served with her in Chester. After the war, Tyler worked as Lady Superintendent of the Midnight Mission, a church-run facility which cared for prostitutes in New York City. Learning that she had developed breast cancer in 1872, Adeline resigned her position. She died in Massachusetts in 1875.
