Laura Virginia McGonigall
Army Nursing Corps, WWI
Born 6 Oct 1884 to Millard F. and Sarah R. (Stilwell) McGonigall, in Havre de Grace, MD. Graduated May 1912 from the prestigious Training School for Nurses at Union Protestant Infirmary in Baltimore, MD.
Founded in 1854 as Baltimore’s first community hospital, in 1920 the facility was renamed Union Memorial Hospital. Today, it operates as MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, a major teaching and specialty hospital located at 201 E. 33rd Street in Baltimore, MD.
Laura joined the Army Nursing Corps in Sept 1918 and was subsequently assigned to the Post Hospital at Camp Meade in Anne Arundel County, MD. Camp Meade Hospital was utilized as a primary training and mobilization center for the Army, where they also handled routine illnesses, training injuries, and the 1918 influenza pandemic among recruits.
Following the war and her release in June 1919, Laura returned to her nursing career in Baltimore. She would meet and marry William Stanley Ray, a printer in Pennsylvania, and relocate to Harrisburg, PA. William died in Jul of 1929, leaving Laura with a young daughter, Virginia who would later marry and settle in Montreal, Canada. Laura returned to Baltimore just before 1940 and worked as a private nurse in and outside city hospitals.
Laura passed away on 3 Jan 1973, with her daughter in Canada and all but one sibling having passed before, her cremated remains would sit unclaimed at a local Baltimore Funeral Home for the next 27-years. In 2000, she, along with the cremated remains of several others, was finally interred in an unmarked grave at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. To recognize and honor her memory and service to her country, we procured and placed a government marker for her in Sep 2025.
