Jane Delano American Legion Post No. 7

The curator of this exhibit wishes to thank Frazier Brinley, historian of the Connecticut American Legion for his invaluable assistance in the researching of this exhibit.

After the close of the war, female service members organized their own separate posts in the American Legion, the veterans’ organization of World War I servicemen.

Hartford’s post, like many of the all-female posts across the country, named their post after Jane Delano. Born on March 12, 1862, Delano graduated from the Bellevue Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1886. While working the Red Cross, she collaborated with colleague Clara Dutton Noyes to make the Red Cross Nursing Service the reserve force of the Army Nurse Corps, a program that received formal approval from the U. S. War Department in 1913. Because of her forward planning, the Red Cross was able to supply more than 8,000 nurses overseas.

Ms. Delano was appointed at the Director of the Red Cross Department of Nursing in 1918. While making an assessment tour of France to make devise plans for future emergencies she took ill and passed away. Her remains are interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Hartford Jane Delano Post functioned no differently than their male counterparts’. The Delano post lobbied for improved care for veterans including the inclusion of female service members in the veteran health network and nursing homes for female veterans. 

Nearly twenty years after the end of World War I, the Delano post erected a memorial monument to the deceased members of their organization in the City of Hartford’s  Northwood Cemetery’s Soldiers Field.  Names of deceased members have been added as the years have gone by. Please note that the inscription was changed to World Wars (plural) sometime after the end of World War II.