Out At the Soldiers' Home

In an effort to aid crippled, chronically ill, or eventually elderly veterans of the Civil War, Congress passed an act that created the the National Asylum (later changed to Home) for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. Looming over modern-day Milwaukee's Miller Park is a lasting reminder of that effort: the old main building of the Northwestern Branch, commonly referred to as The Soldiers' Home. In 1891, Richard Corbett brought his wife and children to live at the Soldiers' Home, where he worked as a civilian administrator. His daughter Elizabeth Corbett became a well-known novelist, and in 1941 she published Out at the Soldiers' Home: A Memory Book, a rather anecdotal account of her life and the lives of the men living at the home. Republished by the West Side Soldiers' Aid Society, it is perhap the only published memoir of a person who lived at one of the dozens of national and state homes built to care for veterans of the Civil War.