Two of the most dedicated and tireless early nursing leaders graduated from Bellevue Training School in New York. Isabel Hampton Robb is noted as a nursing educator and advocated of nursing students as well as for her effects in starting the two nursing organizations that later became the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the National League for Nursing (ANL). Lavinia Dock graduated from Bellevue three years after Ms. Hampton (later, Mrs. Robb) Mrs. Dock played certain roles in organizing the International Council of Nurses.
Bellevue Training School in New York may have been the first training school for nurses to open but The Boston Training School at Mass. General Hospital claims the first trained nurse in the United States, Linda Richards. Sophia Palmer, active in starting both major nursing organizations and first editor of the American Journal of Nursing also graduated from the Boston Training School.
The first African American to become a trained nurse in the United States, Mary Mahoney, graduated from the New England Training School for Women and Children. She was an active participant in the American Nurses Association from its inception and an award is still given in her name by that organization.