Tag: Civil War nurses

Civil War nurses
Authors, Civil War Women

Louisa McCord

• Maggie

Writer and Plantation Mistress in the Civil War Era Louisa Susanna McCord, political theorist, essayist, poet and book reviewer, was almost unique among antebellum southern women. Her published works fill two volumes and deal with subjects hardly touched by her female contemporaries. At the same time, she ran a plantation, supported her family and was the hard-hitting superintendent of an army hospital during the Civil War. She was in many ways an emancipated woman. Childhood and Early Years On December 3, 1810 Louisa Susanna Cheves was born into the aristocratic Charleston, South Carolina family of Langdon and Mary Dulles Cheves. Louisa was one of fourteen children, eight of whom died before 1860. Her father was a politician and her mother’s…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters, Women Scientists

Eliza Frances Andrews

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Novelist, Botanist and Educator Eliza Frances Andrews (1840-1931) was a popular Southern writer whose works were published in popular newspapers and magazines, including the New York World and Godey’s Lady’s Book. Her longer works included The War-Time Journal of a Georgian Girl (1908) and two botany textbooks. Her passion was writing, but financial troubles forced her to take a teaching job after the deaths of her parents, though she continued to be published. Eliza Frances Andrews was born in 1840 in Washington County, Georgia, the daughter of Judge Garnett and Annulet Ball Andrews. She became a writer and a teacher in the Civil War era. In the Andrews home, Eliza had access to newspapers, books, and magazines, and was encouraged…

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Authors, Civil War Women

Jane Grey Swisshelm

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Editor, Journalist and Newspaper Publisher Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884) was a journalist, publisher, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate. She was active as a writer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and as a publisher and editor in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where she founded a string of newspapers and regularly wrote for them. Jane Grey Cannon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 6, 1815, the daughter of a Scotch-Irish chair maker. When her father died in 1827, her mother Mary was left with three children to support. She put Jane to work painting on velvet and making lace. At the age of fourteen, Jane became a schoolteacher. At age 21, Jane married farmer James Swisshelm, over her mother’s objections. Jane was strong-willed, and…

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Abolitionists, African Americans, Civil War Women

Ellen Craft

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Abolitionist and Fugitive Slave from Georgia Ellen Craft was a slave from Macon, Georgia who escaped to the North in 1848. Craft, the light-skinned daughter of a mulatto slave and her white master, disguised herself as a white male planter. Her husband William Craft accompanied her, posing as her personal servant. She traveled openly by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day 1848. Her daring escape was widely publicized, and she became one of the most famous fugitive slaves. Ellen Smith was born in 1826 in Clinton, Georgia, to a biracial slave woman named Maria and her white master, Colonel James Smith. Ellen was so light-skinned that she was often mistaken for a member of her father’s family….

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Catherine Devereux

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Civil War Diaries from North Carolina Catherine Devereux Edmondston (1823-1875) was a member of the planter aristocracy of Halifax County, North Carolina. She was an educated woman of strong character whose intelligence and prejudices surfaced repeatedly in her letters and Civil War diaries. During the 1850s Catherine and her husband Patrick enjoyed a calm, fairly prosperous life at Looking Glass plantation. By 1860 they owned 88 slaves and a 1,894-acre estate, and were ardent secessionists. Catherine Ann Devereux was born in 1823, one of six children to Thomas Pollock Devereux and Catherine Ann Bayard Johnson. She was raised in a wealthy plantation owning family where she received a private education from her father. In 1846 she married Patrick Muir Edmondston,…

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Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Feminists

Sarah Grimke

• Maggie

One of the First Social Reformers in the United States Sarah Moore Grimke, the lesser known of the Grimke sisters, was born November 26, 1792, in Charleston, South Carolina, the daughter of Judge John Grimke. Sarah was a writer, an abolitionist and an early advocate of women’s rights. At five years old, she saw a slave being whipped and tried to board a steamship that could take her to a place where there was no slavery. The Grimkes lived alternately between a fashionable townhouse in Charleston and a thriving cotton plantation in Beaufort with hundreds of slaves. Judge Grimke was the Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. He was a strong advocate of slavery and of the subordination…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Rebecca Wright

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Virginia Spy for the Union Rebecca McPherson Wright, a Union spy during the Civil War, was born near Winchester, Virginia in January, 1842. Her family was one of the few in Winchester who supported the Union. Her father, Amos Wright, died in a Confederate prison early in the war. Rebecca was a schoolteacher, and due to her Quaker beliefs, she abhorred slavery. In August 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early’s army occupied Winchester. While trying to discover the troop strength of Early’s army, Federal scouts came across Thomas Laws, an elderly slave, at his home. When Laws told them that he had a permit to pass through the Confederate lines three times a week to sell vegetables, the scouts enlisted his…

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Civil War Women, Diaries and Letters

Emma Holmes

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Diarist in Charleston, South Carolina Emma Holmes, a Civil War diarist and teacher, was born in 1838 in Charleston, South Carolina, to a plantation owner. During the Civil War, from February 1861 until March 1866, Emma kept a diary of her life in Charleston, the affairs of her family and history as she observed it. A true Confederate, like many others, she believed the war would be over within a few months. In the spring of 1861, Emma recorded in her diary that “the city seemed suddenly turned into a camp. Nothing was heard but preparations for war. The great body of citizens [seems] to be so impressed with the justice of our cause that they place entire confidence in…

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Abolitionists, Civil War Women, Feminists

Anna Dickinson

• Maggie

Abolitionist and Lecturer during the Civil War Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was an abolitionist, writer, lecturer and advocate for women’s rights. A gifted speaker at a very young age, she significantly influenced the distribution of political power in the Union just prior to the Civil War. She helped the Republican Party gain key positions in the hard-fought election campaigns of 1863, and was the first woman to speak before the U.S. Congress. Childhood Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Philadelphia on October 28, 1842, the youngest of five children of Quaker parents. Her father was a dedicated abolitionist who died of a heart attack shortly after giving a fiery antislavery speech in 1844. Since Anna was only two years old, she…

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Eugenia Phillips

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Confederate Spy in the Civil War Born into an assimilated Jewish family in the South, Eugenia Phillips, like many Southern Jews, was a strong supporter of the Confederate cause. Beginning in 1861, Phillips aided Confederate spy networks and secretly passed material aid to Confederate troops. The family later moved to Georgia, where Phillips supposedly toned down her outspoken support of the Confederacy. Eugenia Levy was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1820 to prominent Jewish parents. One of six daughters, Eugenia was well-educated, outspoken and fiery-tempered. At age l6, she married a prominent Jewish lawyer, Philip Phillips, who was 13 years her senior. The couple moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he had already established a successful law practice. He and…

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