90 Chestnut Hill | WWI Nurse Marion McCune Rice

images

  • <p>Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Crowley Cottage - courtesy Brattleboro Historical Society</p>
  • <p>This is one page of the many letters Nurse Marion Rice wrote to<br>her brother and sister-in law Howard and Amy Rice from 1915 to 1919 from France. (Photo<br>courtesy of Steve Hooper)</p>

Play Audio & View Transcript

  • Marion McCune Rice

About

Marion McCune Rice was a World War I American Red Cross nurse for four years and wrote many letters home describing the war and took hundreds of photographs. A documentary film “An American Nurse at War” focuses on her wartime experience. The film was produced by her grandnephew Stephen L. Hooper, a Brattleboro native who currently lives in Keene, NH. In 1925 Rice was named director of the Simmons School of Public Health Nursing in Boston. She resided during the summers and retired in a small cottage at 90 Chestnut Hill on the opposite side of the reservoir from her brother Howard C. Rice’s house at 105 Chestnut Hill. Her cottage was built on the site of the Swiss-style house that hosted New York Tribune Fresh Air children each summer starting in 1884. Marion died in 1955 and is buried in Brattleboro’s Morningside Cemetery next to her parents Charles Bingham Rice, a Civil War veteran, and Fannie Crosby Rice, daughter of flour and grain merchant Edward Crosby. Marion’s middle name McCune pays tribute to her ancestor William McCune who served as a Captain in the Revolutionary War, 1776-78. Steve Hooper narrates the segment with his daughter Althaea reading the part of Marion McCune Rice.

Tour Stop Location

105 Chestnut Hill, Brattleboro, Vermont 05301, United States

Research & Production

Audio Editor: Donna Blackney
Audio Producer: Steve Hooper
Research: Steve & Jackie Hooper
Readings: Althaea Carroll

Music used:
‘Endless’ by Dana Boule (freemusicarchive.org)
‘The Bluff Trail Instrumental’ (freemusicarchive.org)
‘Werdenfelser Trompeten Landler’ by Strassmeir Dachaur Bauernkkapelle (freemusicarchive.org)
‘La Marseillaise’ by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, Performed by United States Navy Band https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_Marseillaise.ogg (public domain)
‘Streetlife’ by Lobo Loco (freemusicarchive.org)

Ongoing Development and Involvement:
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Photos & Video

  • <p>Marion McCune Rice, portrait taken while serving as an American Red Cross nurse in France from 1915-1919, long before the U.S. joined the war effort - Photo courtesy Jackie and Steve Hooper | Rice Family Archives</p>
  • <p>Crowley Park Reservoir on Chestnut Hill and Fresh Air house, 1910. Marion McCune Rice’s cottage at 90 Chestnut Hill was built on the site of this house. - courtesy Brattleboro Historical Society</p>
  • <p>This is one page of the many letters Nurse Marion Rice wrote to<br>her brother and sister-in law Howard and Amy Rice from 1915 to 1919 from France. (Photo<br>courtesy of Steve Hooper)</p>