Helen Scott Hay, a famous Red Cross nurse, was born near Lanark in this county. She graduated from Savanna High School, Northwestern University in Evanston, and the Illinois Training School for Nurses in Chicago, where she later became superintendent. Before World War I, she established a school of nursing in Bulgaria. At the outbreak of war, she became director of American Red Cross Nursing Personnel and was assigned to the Balkans. After America entered the war, she served in Washington. In 1920 she was appointed director of the European work of the Red Cross. She died here in 1932.