…Holland and Springfield Township Recollections
Editor’s Note: This story was submitted by the Holland-Springfield-Spencer Historical Society president Karla Miller.
My research begins first with Florence Nightingale born May 12, 1820, in Florence, ltaly, to an affluent family. During the Victorian era, a young lady was expected to marry and raise a family. Florence wanted to be a nurse, so against her parents’ wishes, she enrolled at age 24, as a nursing student at a Lutheran Hospital in Germany in 1844.
By 1850, she was working at a hospital in London, with horrible working conditions. ln October 1853 the Crimean War broke out with the British Empire at war against the Russian Empire. There were no female nurses at the hospitals in Crimea.
After the Battle of Alma, the English were angry about the neglect of their ill and injured soldiers due to appalling and unsanitary conditions at the hospitals. The no-nonsense nurse Florence Nightingale was hired and quickly set to work ordering the hospitals scrubbed from floor to ceiling. She spent every waking minute caring for soldiers, walking the halls at night carrying a lamp while making her rounds.
The soldiers referred to her as the “Lady With the Lamp” and also “Angel of Crimea.” Florence reduced the death rate by two thirds, and left in 1856 once the Crimean conflict was over to return to her childhood home.
Her services were needed a few years later when the U.S. Civil War began. Throughout the war, Florence was consulted about how to manage field hospitals.
She died at her London home on Saturday, August 13, 1910.
This area’s connection to the famous nurse was derived from a Toledo newspaper story published July 23, 1927, Holland, headlined “Special, Crimean warrior living near Toledo is active worker at 91.”
His life was saved in warswept Turkey by the charitable hand of the famous Florence Nightingale. Below is the storys of how he was rescued and how he met his wife on the other side of the world.
“It has been 72 years since Florence Nightingale, the famous English nurse, immortalized in literature for her heroism, nursed Robert Newnham, 91, of this city, back to health in a desolate war camp near Constantinople, but the aged veteran of the Crimean war recalls her untiring work as clearly as though it were only yesterday.
Grandpa Newnham, as he is affectionately called by practically every Holland resident, is one of the few veterans of the Crimean war living in the United States and is thought to be the only veteran in this country nursed by the noted nurse.
She fed him high choice food prepared by her as he lay bedfast in a wind-swept tent with more than four feet of snow outside, he said in retelling the horrors of the war Turkey waged against Russia.
He refuses to relate his own experiences in the four great battles that decided the conflict but he praises the many things done by the noted nurse. For it was she who saved his life.
Newnham was sent to join the Turkish army when he was only a youth of 19. He was among the thousands of British boys sent to aid the Turks under an agreement made at that time.
Disease claimed a greater toll than did the Russian bullets and in time Newnham was stricken. For weeks he lay unconscious on his bunk in the vicinity of Seutari with little care.
Meanwhile the futile charge of the Light Brigade, of 600 horsemen, had been made and the story of how they rode into the valley of death in vain created interest in England.
Most of the 600 men were killed in that futile charge on that October day in 1854 and immediately Florence Nightingale asked permission to organize a corps of nurses in England to nurse in the vicinity of Constantinople. At that time she was 34 years old and in robust health, Newnham recalls.
When she first came to his bedside on a zero degree December day, she was thin and worn, he recalls. ‘Oh how young to be here’ Miss Nightingale said to Newnham as she raised a large pewter spoon full of steaming soup to his lips.
Then tears fell from her eyes, he recalled, as she ministered to him and talked of the unjustness of a war that would take only young boys from their mothers. All the soldiers literally loved the nurse and her assistants, Newnham recalls, and they considered themselves fortunate to have her minister to them only once. After the Fortress Sevastopol had been reduced to dust in the siege and the war was over, Newnham wandered far and wide in the Middle East. In Punjab, East India, a few years later he met an English girl who later would become his wife. For almost 20 years they corresponded and at last set a date they were to meet in New York.
They met there in 1872 and went to Monroe, Michigan, where they were married July 20, l872. They have been residents of this city for 54 years since their marriage. Mrs. Eliza Newnham is known as Grandma Newnham here and is active despite her 90 years.
They live alone in their home and tend to a garden, do their own work and ‘Grandma’ often has a big family dinner for the two surviving sons. Newnham reads the news of the day without the aid of glasses and never misses a day but for a visit to the combination post office and general store to discuss the news.
Lynn Newnham, 13, a grandson often calls at the home of his grandparents to hear war tales retold and to sample the cookies his grandmother is noted for in Holland.”
Another article was published in the Toledo Blade on July 21, 1932, regarding the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary.
The story read “Crimean War vet and wife mark anniversary. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Newnham, Ho|land’s oldest couple, observed their 60th wedding anniversary Wednesday, July 20. The couple have resided in the same house since their marriage. He is 97, she 96. The home located on the southeast corner of Hall Street at Maumee Street. (The house is still there today).”
Robert Newnham was born August 26, 1836 in England. He passed July 36, 1933, Lucas County Hospital at age 98. He is buried at Springfield Township Cemetery. Elizabeth Wilcox was born October 1, 1836, in London, England. She passed January 5, 1934 in Holland of bronchial pneumonia at age 97 and is buried in Springfield Township cemetery.
Newnham children were:
•Frederick Walter Newnham born August 14, 1875, Toledo. He died June 27, 1931, in a truck accident Akron, age 56. Frederick married Zoe E. Hill, December 25, 1900 in Lucas County. Zoe died March 2, 1933, at age 53, Oakwood Avenue, Toledo, of suicide. Both are buried in Springfield Township cemetery. Three daughters survive her.
•Arthur L. Newnham born January 6, 1877, Toledo, passed December 5, 1890, age 12. Buried in Springfield Township cemetery.
•William Harrison Newnham born February 23, 1880, Toledo. He died August 31, 1956, Maumee Street, Holland, age 76. William was married 1908 in Lucas County to Bertha N. Kuechenmeister born November 1887, Spencer Township. She died December 26, 1970, Hilltop Rest Home, Waterville, age 83. Both are buried in the township cemetery. Three sons survive. William’s son Wilbert Clyde Newnham 1915-1986 served in the Middle East in World War II in the same area where his grandfather Robert Newnham had served 99 years earlier.
