Thirteen Colonies

Pocahontas Saves John Smith?

• Maggie

The Year 1607 This account of Pocahontas’ life comes from Chief Roy Crazy Horse, who is the head of the Powhatan Nation today. I tend to believe his version, because it’s more realistic. What motivation could he possibly have to lie? Image: Statue of Pocahontas Gravesend, Kent, England I’m not necessarily faulting the colonists. I’m sure they needed legends to believe in to make their lives more bearable. And that’s what I believe the story of Pocahontas we’ve heard all our lives is – a legend. This is Chief Roy’s history of Pocahontas:

Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Fannie Beers

• Maggie

Florence Nightingale of the South Image: Aftermath by Martin Pate This painting shows Civil War nurse Fannie Beers at Brown’s Mill battlefield in Coweta County, Georgia during the Atlanta Campaign. The scene is described in Beers’ journal, Memories. There is not much information available about the personal life of Fannie Beers, only that she was born in the North, and married A. P. Beers when she was very young. She wrote in her memoirs, Memories: A Record of Personal Experiences and Adventures During Four Years of War, that she met him while he was a student at Yale University and she was living with her mother in New Haven, Connecticut. The couple moved to New Orleans at some point, and…

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Virginia Clay, wife of Senator Clement Clay
Civil War Women

Virginia Clay

• Maggie

  Southern Belle and Wife of Confederate Senator Clement Clay Virginia Tunstall was born in 1825 in Nash County, North Carolina, the daughter of a doctor. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father left her upbringing to his wife’s family in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Virginia graduated from the Female Academy at Nashville, Tennessee in 1840. In 1843, she returned to Tuscaloosa, where she met a newly-elected member of the Alabama Senate, Clement Clay, Jr. Virginia married Clement Clay after courting for only a month, and moved with Clay to his home in Huntsville, Alabama. Virginia gave birth to their only child in 1853, and it died in infancy. Clay was elected to the United States Senate in…

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African Americans, Civil War Women, Educators, Famous Firsts

Susie King Taylor

• Maggie

African American Civil War Nurse and Teacher Susie Baker began life as a slave on August 6, 1848, at the Grest Plantation in Liberty County, Georgia, 35 miles south of Savannah. She was the first of nine children of Hagar Ann Reed and Raymond Baker. Her mother was a domestic servant for the Grest family. The Grests treated Susie and her brother with great affection, their childless mistress even allowing them to sleep on her bed when her husband was away on business. This easy-going atmosphere, Susie’s first experience of mutual trust between black people and white, became part of the standard by which she judged all later relationships with white people. About 1854 Mr. Grest allowed Susie and her…

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Amy Harper
Civil War Women

Amy Harper

• Maggie

After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, 60,000 Union soldiers under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman marched more than 1,000 miles through the South. By March 1865, his army was in the middle of North Carolina, heading north with the intention of joining forces with General Ulysses S. Grant, who was then besieging the Confederate capital of Richmond. As part of his attempt to defend Richmond and nearby Petersburg, General Robert E. Lee assigned General Joseph E. Johnston to stop Sherman’s forces from entering Virginia. In central North Carolina Johnston managed to piece together a rag­tag army of 20,000 men. He maneuvered to take advantage of Sherman’s decision to divide his army into two columns. On the…

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Abolitionists, African Americans, Civil War Women

Abolitionism

• Maggie

Abolitionism was a political movement that sought to end the practice of slavery and the slave trade. ‘The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage’ was the first American abolition society. It was established in Philadelphia in 1775, primarily by Quakers, who believed that one man owning another was a sin. Its operation was suspended during the British occupation of Philadelphia and the Revolutionary War. It began again in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as first president. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, an agreement was reached that allowed the Federal government to abolish the international slave trade by 1808. The principal organized bodies of this reform were the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, and…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Emily Lyles Harris

• Maggie

Emily Lyles was born in 1827 and grew up in the village of Spartanburg, South Carolina, until 1840, when the family moved to the country. Amos Lyles was determined to educate his only daughter, and he enrolled Emily in Phoebe Paine’s school in the village. Emily boarded there as well. Miss Paine was a Yankee, and believed that women should be educated to their full potential, and she taught Emily to write with feeling and understanding about the world around her. Miss Paine also admonished Emily to never forget her innate talents. Emily married David Lyles in 1846. David farmed 100 acres of his 500-acre property, which was located 8 miles from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Thereafter, Emily’s life was tough….

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Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Elizabeth Thorn

• Maggie

Caretaker of Gettysburg’s Evergreen Cemetery At the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, Elizabeth Thorn was caretaker of Evergreen Cemetery, a job normally performed by her husband Peter but he was away serving in the Union Army. Her elderly parents and her three small sons were living with her in the cemetery gatehouse, and she was six months pregnant. The cemetery grounds were littered with dead soldiers and horses, and it was her responsibility to bury them. Image: Elizabeth Thorn Monument This 7-foot bronze statue created by sculptor Ron Tunison of Cairo, New York, depicts a weary Elizabeth Thorn, leaning on a shovel as she rests from her work. The memorial was dedicated in November 2002 and honors the contributions…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Ella Palmer

• Maggie

Civil War Nurse from Tennessee During the Civil War years, widow Ella Palmer basically gave up her own life to travel wherever sick and wounded Confederate soldiers needed her tender care, with her small daughter in tow. Her selflessness was a testament to her devotion to the Confederacy and the Southern cause. Ella Palmer was born in Tennessee in 1829. When the Civil War began, she was widowed with a five-year-old daughter. When the Confederate Government asked for help from its citizens, she and her daughter responded to Chattanooga, where they found sick and wounded soldiers lying on the floor in a makeshift hospital, with no blankets to keep them warm. Palmer gathered all her own worldly goods and returned…

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Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Women Doctors

Mary Edwards Walker

• Maggie

First Woman Surgeon in the Union Army After the Battle of Fredricksburg in December 1862, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker worked as a Civil War field surgeon near the Union front lines, treating soldiers in a tent hospital. She tried to increase the survival rate by advising stretcher bearers not to carry wounded soldiers downhill with the head below the feet. Although she probably did not perform any amputations, she thought that many of them were unnecessary and encouraged some soldiers to refuse them. Mary Edwards Walker, second female doctor in the United States, was born in Oswego, New York, on November 26, 1832, into an abolitionist family. Mary was the youngest of five girls, followed by one boy. Her father,…

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