Category: Civil War Women

Wife of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston Lydia McLane was born January 31, 1822, at Wilmington, Delaware. She was the daughter of Catherine and Louis McLane. Her father was a diplomat and U.S. Cabinet officer, serving as U.S. Minister to England from 1829-1831, and from 1845-1846. Joseph Eggleston Johnston was born February 3, 1807, at Longwood House in Farmville, Virginia, the eighth son of Judge Peter and Mary Johnston. He was named for the officer his father served under during in the Revolutionary War. When he was four years old, the family moved to Panicello, their new home near Abingdon, a location more convenient for Peter to serve the southwestern Virginia circuit. Judge Johnston was an ardent huntsman, and his…

Wife of Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard In 1860, widower Pierre Beauregard married Caroline Deslonde, whose family owned plantations in Louisiana and a home on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans known as Stalian Hall. Caroline’s sister Mathilde married John Slidell, a US Senator from Louisiana. Both men served important roles in the Confederacy, Beauregard as the famous general and Slidell as an important Confederate diplomat. Image: General P.G.T. Beauregard Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was born on May 28, 1818, at his family’s plantation home, Contreras, in St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents were Creole planter Jacques Toutant Beauregard and Helene Judith de Reggio Beauregard. Beginning at age eight, Gustave (as he was called in his youth)…

Wife of Union General Ambrose Burnside Mary Richmond Bishop was described as somewhat religious, a rather tall, and a stately young woman, who conveyed a courtly presence. She was the daughter of Nathaniel and Fanny Windsor Bishop of Bristol, Rhode Island. Her father was a Rhode Island Militia Major. Ambrose Everett Burnside was born in Liberty, Indiana on May 23, 1824, the son of a South Carolina slaveowner who had freed his slaves and moved his family to Indiana. At the age of 19, Burnside, through his father’s political connections was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1847, ranked 18 out of 38 in his class, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the…

Wife of Confederate General and Senator Charlotte Wigfall, wife of the 1st Texas Regiment’s Colonel, made her wedding dress into a Lone Star Flag for the Regiment, and presented this flag that she had sewn by hand to the regiment in the summer of 1861. Carried by the 1st Texas Infantry of General John Bell Hood’s Brigade, the flag was captured during the Battle of Sharpsburg – September 17, 1862 – after nine of the men who carried it had fallen. Image:Mrs. Wigfall’s Wedding Dress by Dale Gallon Charlotte Maria Cross was born in 1818, and there is no further information about her early years. Louis Trezevant Wigfall was born April 21, 1816, on a plantation near Edgefield, South Carolina,…

Wife of Union General George B. McClellan As a young lieutenant, George B. McClellan, was very fond of his commanding officer’s young daughter, Ellen Mary Marcy, but she was in love with another future Civil War general, Ambrose Powell Hill, and it took McClellan seven long years to win her hand in marriage. Image: Ellen Mary Marcy McClellan with her husband Ellen Mary Marcy was born in 1836 in Philadelphia. She was the blonde, blue-eyed daughter of Major Randolph Marcy – explorer of the famous Red River and Federal chief-of-staff in the first years of the war. Marcy was an army officer who gained a good deal of fame in the decade just before the Civil War, as an explorer…

Wife of Union General Irvin McDowell Helen Burden, born June 27, 1826, was the daughter of Henry and Helen McOuat Burden, who came to America from Scotland via Quebec. The family settled first in Albany, New York, then Troy, New York, where Helen’s father owned the Burden Iron Works, which made horseshoes. Image: General Irvin McDowell Irvin McDowell, born 1818 near Columbus, Ohio, entered the West Point Military Academy in 1834, when he was 16 years old. He graduated from West Point in 1838, and served on the Northern frontier during the Canada border disturbances, on the Maine frontier pending the disputed Territory controversy, and in the Mexican war under General John Ellis Wool. Helen met McDowell through General Wool,…