Kentucky-born Abbie Viola (Ewart) Watkins (1889-1977) moved to Seattle with her family in 1907. She graduated from Queen Anne High School in 1910 and from Seattle General Hospital School of Nursing in 1913. After two years of caring for tuberculosis patients at Firland Sanatorium, Abbie Ewart opened a single-day surgery clinic in Seattle with another nurse. Ewart sold the surgery to her partner in late 1917 to begin training as a military nurse after the United States entered World War I. Seattle area nurses trained at Fort Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord), then were transported to New Jersey and New York before shipping overseas for service. Ewart served at Base Hospitals 47 and 43 in France in 1918, and at Evacuation Hospitals in Germany in 1919 before returning to New York in June 1919 on the SS Imperator, exactly one year from the day that she'd left.

Abbie Ewart kept the diary pictured here from about 1917-1919, covering her experiences as a military nurse. She left New York on June 12, 1918, on the White Star Line's SS Megantic, writing in her diary that day, "As we passed the Statue of Liberty we seemed to leave a little of us behind for we realized then for the first time - we were really leaving our homeland."