 However, the navy did not provide room or board for them, and so the nurses rented their own house and provided their own meals.In time, the nurses would come to be known as "The Sacred Twenty" because they were the first women to serve formally as members of the Navy.The "Sacred Twenty" were Mary H. Du Bose; Adah M. Pendleton; Elizabeth M. Hewitt; Della V. Knight; Josephine Beatrice Bowman; Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee; Esther Voorhees Hasson, the first Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1908–1911; Martha E. Pringle; Elizabeth J.