Tag: educators

educators
Civil War Women, Famous Wives, Women in Business

Elizabeth Jarvis Colt

• Maggie

Woman Who Ran the Colt Firearms Factory When firearms manufacturer Samuel Colt died in 1862, majority ownership in the Colt Fire Arms Company passed to his wife, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt. Called the Grande Dame of Connecticut, she worked tirelessly to preserve her husband’s accomplishments and safeguard his legacy. The company continued to thrive under her leadership for almost forty years. Image: Elizabeth Jarvis Hart Colt With her son Caldwell Portrait by Charles Loring Elliott Early Years Elizabeth Hart Jarvis was born October 5, 1826 in Saybrook, Connecticut to Episcopal Minister William Jarvis and Elizabeth Jarvis, the eldest of five children in an affluent and socially prominent family. Samuel Colt, born July 19, 1814, was an inventor and arms manufacturer in…

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Civil War Women, Civil War Women Working

Women Working at the Treasury

• Maggie

Women at the U.S. Treasury Department Image: Lady Clerks Leaving the Treasury Department at Washington This illustration was published February 18, 1865, in Harper’s Weekly. During the Civil War, the Department of the Treasury in Washington, DC hired women workers to fill clerical positions vacated by men who had left to fight with the Union Army. Until that time, clerking was strictly a male occupation. Believing women were particularly well-suited for the task, the Treasurer of the United States assigned them to hand-cut paper money, usually printed in amounts of four bills per sheet. Backstory Prior to 1790, the ground now covered by magnificent public and private buildings and known as the City of Washington, was part of a Maryland…

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Civil War Hospitals, Civil War Women

Chimborazo Hospital

• Maggie

Largest Military Hospital in the World Image: Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia A man with a crutch looks out upon the long white buildings of Chimborazo Hospital on the hill above in a photograph taken just after the city had fallen to Union forces in April 1865. Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia essentially functioned as a village, complete with bathhouse, soap factory, morgues, and a bakery. Phoebe Yates Pember was one of the first women to serve as a hospital matron during the Civil War. Her memoirs describe in vivid detail her experiences as one of the first women to enter the previously all-male field of medicine in the Confederacy. A Hospital on a Hill Several million men went off…

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Activists, Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Adaline Weston Couzins

• Maggie

Civil War Nurse in St. Louis, Missouri Union Nurse: Adaline Weston Couzins Adaline Weston Couzins was a Union nurse in Missouri. She was one of the Civil War Nurses on Hospital Ships that traveled up and down the Mississippi River, risking her life helping wounded soldiers. A Minie ball struck her in the knee in 1863, but she kept on nursing throughout the war and afterward. She was a woman of great courage and compassion for her fellow men and women. Early Life Adaline Weston was born August 12, 1815, in Brighton, England. At the age of eight, she came to America with her parents. In 1834, Adaline eloped with John Edward Decker Couzins, a carpenter and builder by trade….

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Civil War Spies, Civil War Women

Union Women Spies

• Maggie

Civil War Women Spies for the Union The Union Army employed several other methods of gathering information about the South during the Civil War, but agents in the field – men and women – were the major source of espionage and intelligence gathering activities. Many agents operated under several different names. Due to the clandestine nature of their work, records were poorly kept or intentionally destroyed and the identity of most of these operatives will never be known. Image: Elizabeth Van Lew Union Spy in Richmond, Virginia Pinkerton’s Women Agents A former sheriff and native of Scotland, Allan Pinkerton had established a detective agency in Chicago in 1850. Pinkerton gained fame early on by foiling a plot to assassinate President…

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Civil War Women, Famous Children

Eleanor Agnes Lee

• Maggie

Daughter of Confederate General Robert E. Lee The Lee daughters had impressive pedigrees. They were direct descendants of the aristocratic Lees of Virginia and England, as well as George and Martha Washington. Mrs. Robert E. Lee’s father, George Washington Parke Custis, was the first president’s adopted son and the man who established the 1,100-acre plantation called Arlington. Several years later, Custis built Arlington House (1817), the ancestral home of the Custises and Lees on the Potomac River overlooking Washington DC. Agnes Lee Eleanor Agnes Lee, born February 27, 1841, was called Agnes. She was the third of four daughters and the fifth of seven children of Mary Anna Custis and Robert E. Lee, born at the family’s Virginia estate, Arlington….

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Civil War Women, Female Soldiers

Civil War Cavalry Women

• Maggie

Women Who Served in the Civil War Cavalry It is impossible to state with any certainty how many women served as cavalry soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies. The cavalry was considered more glamorous than infantry and artillery, but females who made it in the cavalry had to be excellent horsewomen, in addition to their other soldierly duties. Stories romanticizing their adventurous spirits and extolling their patriotism appeared in the New York Times, the Richmond Examiner and the Chicago Daily Tribune. Image: Federal Cavalry Charge! at Gettysburg Is there a cavalrywoman in this painting? Cavalrywomen Despite the physical strain, a few women are known to have served in the cavalry branches of both the Union and the Confederate armies….

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Civil War Women, Women Artists

Cornelia Adele Fassett

• Maggie

Painter of Politicians and Officials in Washington DC Cornelia Adele Fassett was an American artist known for her political paintings and portraits. Her most famous work, The Florida Case Before the Electoral Commission (1878), now hangs in the United States Capitol. Her paintings of the Supreme Court and Justices are in the art collection of the U.S. Supreme Court. Image: Cornelia Adele Strong Fassett Between 1865 and 1880 Library of Congress Personal Life Cornelia Adele Strong was born November 9, 1831 in Owasco, New York, the third of six children of Captain Walker Strong and Sarah Devoe Strong. Cornelia was raised in Jefferson, Ohio, where her father was a hotel keeper. On August 26, 1851 Cornelia married Samuel Montague Fassett,…

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Civil War Love Stories, Civil War Women, First Ladies

Lucy and Rutherford B. Hayes

• Maggie

A Civil War Love Story Born August 28, 1831 in Chillicothe, Ohio, Lucy Ware Webb was the daughter of physician James Webb and Maria Cook Webb. When Lucy was two years old, her father died of cholera while on a trip to Lexington, Kentucky to free slaves he had inherited from his aunt. Lucy developed strong abolitionist convictions from her father and grandfather, both of whom were slaveholders at one time. Image: Lucy and Rutherford B. Hayes Wedding photograph, December 30, 1852 In 1844 Maria Webb moved her family to Delaware, Ohio, where Lucy’s brothers enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan University. Lucy first met Rutherford Birchard Hayes on the Ohio Wesleyan campus in 1847. Later that year, Lucy enrolled at Wesleyan…

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Civil War Women, Gettysburg

Bliss Farm at Gettysburg

• Maggie

Hotly Contested Area on the Gettysburg Battlefield Image: Bliss Farm Markers in the distance honor the men who fought here and deliniate the site of the William Bliss Farm that once existed here. Mid-left, in front of the trees, honors the 14th Connecticut Infantry. The clump of earth behind it is the remains of the earthen ramp that once led into the Bliss Barn. To the right is the 12th New Jersey Infantry marker. On the far right, out of frame, a smaller marker stands where the Bliss farmhouse once was. These markers are the only physical testaments to the struggle that took place over this key location. Credit: Battle of Gettysburg Buff Bliss Farm After losing three of their…

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