Dix (Dorothea) is born in Hampden, Maine.

Dorothea Dix grows up in Worcester, moves to Boston in 1814, and opens a school for young children in 1816. She travels to England, meets people involved in the reform movement for the mentally ill, and begins her own efforts after a visit to the East Cambridge House of Correction in 1841.* After three-year tour of the state’s corrections facilities, she speaks before the Massachusetts legislature in 1843.* Dix campaigns for reforms throughout the U.S. and in Europe, and is appointed the first superintendent of Army Nurses in the Civil War. She dies in Trenton, New Jersey, on July 17, 1887, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.