The Hartford Courant, June 9, 1918; pg. 28
Miss Dorothy Cheney of South Manchester has attained fame on the field of battle. For her bravery under fire,
during the bombing of the hospital at Beauvais, the daughter of one of Connecticut's most famous families was
among those being recommended for a "memorial of some sort." Although no definite news of her deeds has been
received by relatives in this city and Manchester, she undoubtedly partook of the noble work done by the nurses'
aids and physicians so highly commended in a dispatch from Raymond Carroll, correspondent of the "Philadelphia
Public Ledger."
At the recent Boche raid and bombardment during the founding of the American Hospital at Beauvais, the
correspondent said that remarkable fearlessness was shown by Miss Cheney and her co-workers in carrying the
wounded on stretchers to lower floors and even sang to aid those suffering from shell shock. In the meantime,
bombs were being dropped and the Germans also sent a flare of light to see if damage had been complete.
Those mentioned for their bravery were Miss Mary Hoyt of New York, Miss Clara Justice of Erie, Pa., Miss Dorothy
Cheney of Manchester, Miss Nathalia Scott of New Orleans, Miss Mary McCandlis of Atlanta, Ga., Miss Blanche Gult
of Cleveland, Miss Frances Cook of San Francisco, Miss Frances Webster of Chester Hill, Mass., and Miss Elinor
Wilson of New York, many of whom were members of the Smith College Relief Unit. Doctors honored for their
courage were Major John Moorhead of New York and Major Fred Murphy of St. Louis, the famous Yale half-mile
runner, who continued operating during the bombing.
Miss Cheney had until recently been at the Red Cross office in Paris, where she was private secretary to Dr.
Alexander Lambert, who is now in this country for a short stay. For a few weeks, she has been acting in the
capacity of nurses' aid and social service worker in the hospitals, with duties of interpreter between the
American nurses and French soldiers and of being generally useful in other ways from nursing. For this, she was
particularly well trained, being fluent in French and having done extensive settlement and social service work
in this city. She has been most active in the work of Friendly Visitors Club of the Union for Home Work, the
Home for Crippled Children in Newington and the Hartford Hospital social service. Late last fall she sailed for
France for work with the Red Cross.
She is the daughter of the late Colonel Frank W. Cheney and Mrs. Cheney of Manchester. Her father, who died
in 1909, while she was traveling in the Far East, was for many years the head of the famous Cheney Brothers
silk-manufacturing concern. Her mother was Mary Bushnell, second daughter of Rev. Dr. Horace Bushnell. She is
the sister of Mrs. Charles A. Goodwin of this city and has several brothers and a sister, Miss Marjorie Cheney,
living in South Manchester. Her mother died last year in New York.
Her father was noted for his bravery, being a hero in the Civil War in which he was severely wounded in the
Battle of Antietam. Ward Cheney, one of her oldest brothers, enlisted in the army at the time of the
Spanish-American War and was killed at Imus, not far from Cavite.