Harriett Louise Carfrae

Submitted by: Mary Rohrer, Dexter County Historical Project

Harriett Louise Carfrae born in 1879. Harriett Carfrae served in World War 1 with the Red Cross. The enlistment was in 1917 and the service was completed in 1920.

Story of Service

Born Ninety miles south of Lake Erie at Norwalk, Ohio on January 10, 1879 to immigrant parents, Harriett Louise Carfrae moved west with her family to Miami County, Indiana before her first birthday. Her father, James, was Scottish and worked as a boilermaker for the railroad. Her mother, Margaret Dillon Carfrae, was Irish, but arrived in the United States by immigrating first to Canada.

Harriett had curly, dark hair, light eyes and wore round wire glasses. It can be guessed that she was not very tall from the average size of others with the same nationality of her parents.

When she was 18, Harriett was part of the leadership of a Christian youth organization named, The Christian Endeavor, which was involved in the temperance movement. She was known as Hattie by her friends.

When she turned 21, she moved to St Louis in order to attend the Baptist Sanitarium Hospital School of Nursing. She graduated with 17 other women in 1903. The school of nursing was a two-year program which enrolled its first students in 1895, indicating Harriet was part of the school’s seventh graduating class. At some point, the nursing school expanded to a three-year program.

Read the entire article on the Miami County, Indiana Worth Remembering web site:

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