Category: Civil War Women

Civil War Women
Authors, Civil War Women

Augusta Evans

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Southern Novelist in the Civil War Era Author Augusta Evans (1835-1909) wrote nine novels about Southern women that were among the most popular fiction in nineteenth-century America. Her novels Beulah and St. Elmo are the best-known. Given her support for the Confederate States of America and her literary activities during the Civil War, she decisively added to the literary and cultural development of the Confederacy. Early Years Augusta Jane Evans was born May 8, 1835 in Columbus, Georgia, the oldest of eight children of well-to-do parents Matthew Ryan Evans and Sarah Skrine Howard Evans. As a young girl in 19th century America Augusta received little in the way of a formal education. She was tutored her at home by her…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Carrie Shead

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For many years during the mid-nineteenth century Carrie Shead ran a school for young ladies in the family home on the Chambersburg Pike, just west of Gettysburg in southern central Pennsylvania. On the morning of July 1, 1863, Carrie sent the students home at the first sound of gunfire. That afternoon, the Battle of Gettysburg engulfed her home, as Union forces began to fall back from Seminary Ridge. Colonel Charles Wheelock of the 97th New York Infantry ran into the Shead house, closely followed by several Confederate soldiers intent on taking him prisoner. He fled down to the cellar, but the Rebels followed him. Carrie went, too, pleading for a stop to further bloodshed. When the Confederates called for his…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Cornelia Phillips Spencer

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Cornelia Phillips Spencer, a writer during the Civil War era, was born March 20 1825 in Harlem, New York where her father conducted a boys’ school. She was the youngest of three children. Her family moved to Chapel Hill in 1826 when her father, James Phillips, took a post as Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina. Cornelia grew up in Chapel Hill and was educated in Latin, Greek, French, literature, music, drawing, and needlework. In 1851, at age twenty-six, Cornelia met twenty-two-year-old James Munroe Spencer, a law student. They married in 1855 and moved to Alabama, where their only child, Julia “June” James Spencer, was born in 1859. In June 1861, James Spencer died after a long…

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Civil War Women, Philanthropists

Annie Wittenmyer

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Philanthropist and Reformer During the Civil War Annie Wittenmyer’s husband died shortly before the Civil War began, leaving her considerable wealth, and enabling her to become one of America’s foremost women reformers. After becoming secretary of her local Soldiers’ Aid Society, she launched a statewide system of collecting and distributing hospital supplies. After the war, she lobbied Congress for a bill that would grant pensions for former Civil War nurses. Born on August 26 1827, in Sandy Springs, Ohio, Annie Turner later became a Civil War nurse and relief worker. She married William Wittenmyer in 1847. In 1850, they moved, with his eleven year-old daughter Sally Anne to Keokuk, Iowa. When Annie arrived at Keokuk, there were no public schools…

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Civil War Women, Famous Firsts

Anna Ella Carroll

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First (Unofficial) Woman Cabinet Member President Abraham Lincoln asked Anna Ella Carroll to become his special advisor and an unofficial member of his Cabinet, the first woman to ever hold such a position. Unfortunately, the public never knew about Carroll’s important contributions because a woman would not have been trusted to fill such roles in the U.S. government. Anna Ella Carroll was born on August 29, 1815, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in a twenty-two-room mansion called Kingston Hall on a 2000-acre tobacco plantation in Somerset County. She was the first of eight children born to Juliana Stevenson Carroll and Thomas King Carroll. Anna’s paternal grandfather, Charles Carroll, signed the Declaration of Independence. Anna was educated and trained by her father…

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Civil War Women, Famous Wives

Jane McDowell Foster

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Wife of Civil War Era Composer Stephen Foster Jane McDowell Foster inspired the song Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, but her marriage to composer Stephen Foster proved to be less than romantic. Disillusioned and conflicted by the outbreak of the Civil War, Foster spent his last years in New York City, living on the Bowery and writing songs for cash. Jane McDowell was born in 1829, the daughter of Dr. Andrew N. McDowell, a leading Pittsburgh physician. She was an attractive young woman with auburn hair. Stephen Collins Foster was born to William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Foster in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, on July 4th, 1826 – the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. After…

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African Americans, Authors, Civil War Women

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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Author, Feminist and Social Reformer Frances Ellen Watkins was born to free parents in Baltimore, Maryland in 1825. She was not yet three years old when her mother died, and she was raised by her uncle, Reverend William Watkins, a teacher and radical advocate for civil rights who founded the William Watkins Academy for free African American children for Negro Youth ( where Frances was educated). The education she received there, and her uncle’s civil rights activism greatly influenced her writing. Frances attended her uncle’s school until she was thirteen years old, when she was sent out to earn a living. She found work as a babysitter and seamstress for the Armstrong family. Mr. Armstrong owned a bookstore, and he…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Juliet Hopkins

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Hospital Matron and Nurse from Alabama Juliet Hopkins (1818–1890) was born on a plantation in West Virginia, but moved to Mobile, Alabama after marrying Arthur Hopkins. When her husband was appointed to oversee hospitals during the Civil War, Juliet went to work converting tobacco factories into hospitals. She made daily visits to the injured soldiers, and received a wound on the battlefield in the course of her duties. Juliet Ann Opie was born in Jefferson County, Virginia on May 7, 1818, the daughter of a wealthy planter. She was educated at home by English tutors and later in a private school in Richmond. When she was sixteen years old, her mother died and she left school to help manage the…

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Civil War Women, Educators

Margaret Douglass

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Virginia Teacher of Free Black Children In the first half of the nineteenth century a number of slave rebellions occurred, which frightened white citizens and underscored the need to maintain tight control over the literacy of blacks. In June 1852 Margaret Douglass, a white former slaveholder from South Carolina, began a school for free black children in her home in Norfolk, Virginia. An unlikely martyr for black education, Douglass was arrested in May 1853 for violating the law – she had no idea that teaching any black child to read and write in Virginia was a crime. Margaret Douglass was born in Washington, DC, but her family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, when she was very young. She married and…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Belle Edmondson

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Civil War Spy and Smuggler Belle Edmondson ardently supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. She probably began smuggling supplies and funds to the Confederate army in 1862, after the fall of Memphis, and served as a Confederate agent throughout the war. In July 1864, she fled south, because the United States had issued a warrant for her arrest. Isabella Buchanan Edmondson was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi on November 27, 1840, the youngest of eight children. When the Civil War began, the Edmondsons were living on a farm in Shelby County south of Memphis, Tennessee. They were staunch supporters of the Confederacy. Two of Belle’s brothers fought at Shiloh, and Belle nursed the wounded from that battle. In June 1862,…

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