Tag: generals wives

generals wives
Civil War Women, Famous Firsts, Women Artists

Edmonia Lewis

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Women in Art: 19th Century Sculptor Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor who created beautiful art and received great acclaim. In a world which did not encourage women of color, through incredible determination and sense of purpose, Lewis became the first professional African American and Native American sculptor, and often depicted African and Native peoples in her work. Among her best-known sculptures are Minnehaha, Charles Sumner, Phillis Wheatley and Abraham Lincoln. Early Years Edmonia Lewis’ 1865 passport application states that she was born on July 4, 1844 in Greenbush, New York. Her father was a free black of West Indian lineage. Edmonia often said she was given the name Wild Fire by her mother, who was an excellent weaver and…

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African Americans, Civil War Women

Margaret Garner

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Runaway Slave from Kentucky Margaret Garner was a fugitive slave who became widely known when she and her family made a brave escape to freedom in the years before the Civil War. Garner killed her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize winning novel Beloved (1988) is based on this story. Image: The Modern Medea By Thomas Satterwhite Noble Margaret Garner, an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America, was born on June 4, 1834, at Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Kentucky, where her parents were also slaves. When she was old enough, Margaret became a household domestic, waiting on the family and performing household chores. On a bitter cold…

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African Americans, Civil War Women, Women in Religion

Julia Foote

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Female Preacher in the Civil War Era Julia A. J. Foote’s autobiography, A Brand Plucked from the Fire (1879), is representative of a large number of similar texts published by women who believed that Christianity had made them the spiritual equals of men and hence equally authorized to lead the church. Although her autobiography attacks racism and other social abuses, it is the subordination of women and her desire to inspire faith in her Christian sisters that endow her story with its distinctive voice and intensity. Foote’s belief in the gender equality of the Christian spirit and her refusal to defer to husband or minister when her own intuitive sense of personal authority was at stake mark Foote’s autobiographical work…

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Civil War Women

Mary Surratt

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Accused Conspirator in the Lincoln Assassination Mary Elizabeth Jenkins was born in May or June of 1823 near Waterloo, Maryland. She had two brothers. Her father died when she was two years old. Mary was then enrolled at a private girl’s boarding school, Academy for Young Ladies, in Alexandria Virginia. She married John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was sixteen and he was twenty-seven. The couple lived on lands that John had inherited from his foster parents, the Neales, in what is now a section of Washington DC known as Congress Heights. They had three children. In 1851, a fire destroyed their home. The couple bought a farm and established a tavern and later a post office. The tavern…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women, Women Doctors

Mary Jane Safford

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Civil War Nurse and Female Physician Mary Jane Safford is best known for nursing wounded Union soldiers on battlefields and hospital ships on the Mississippi River during the Civil War, an experience that influenced her to pursue a career in medicine. After the war, she earned her medical degree, established a practice, and taught at the Boston University Medical School. Early Years Mary Jane Safford was born December 31, 1834 in Hyde Park, Vermont, but her family moved to Crete, Illinois when she was three years old. After her parents died, family members sent her to a female academy in Bakersfield, Vermont, then allowed her to travel in Canada to learn French and to act as governess to a German-speaking…

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Mary Anna Morrison Jackson
Authors, Civil War Women, Generals Wives

Mary Anna Morrison Jackson

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Wife of General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson Anna met her future husband while visiting her sister, Isabella Morrison Hill, wife of future Confederate General Dana Harvey Hill, in Lexington, Virginia, where Jackson was a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. Image: Anna with daughter Julia Laura Jackson Mary Anna Morrison – called Anna by friends and family – was born on July 21, 1831, in Charlotte, North Carolina, at Cottage Home, the plantation home of Reverend Robert Hall Morrison and Mary Graham Morrison. Her father was the first President of Davidson College in Charlotte. Anna grew up very differently than her famous husband. Her parents had a large family, ten children who survived to adulthood. Life on the plantation was carefree for…

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Civil War Nurses, Civil War Women

Katharine Prescott Wormeley

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Civil War Nurse At the beginning of the Civil War, the United States Government was not prepared to offer its soldiers adequate medical care. To fill that need, they created the United States Sanitary Commission on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wounded soldiers of the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. It operated across the North, raised its own funds, enlisted thousands of volunteers and was run by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Peninsula Campaign of 1862 lasted nine weeks, and inflicted a terrible cost in lives. During that campaign, Katharine Prescott Wormeley, Georgeanna Woolsey, and Eliza Woolsey Howland served as Union nurses. Working on board Sanitary Commission’s hospital transport ships, these three members of prominent Northern families…

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Civil War Women, Philanthropists, Women in Business

Margaret Haughery

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Women in Business in the Civil War Era Margaret Haughery was a business entrepreneur and philanthropist who became known as the Mother of the Orphans. She devoted her life to the care and feeding of the poor and hungry, and to funding and building orphanages throughout the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Born into poverty and orphaned at a young age, she began her adult life as a washwoman and a peddler – yet she died an epic business woman and philanthropist who received a state funeral. Image: Margaret Haughery with Two Orphans Painting by Jacques Amans, New Orleans, c. 1842 Out of the horror of civil war and a nation of diverse people bound by a shared tragedy, armies…

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Civil War Women, Famous Children

Kate Chase

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Washington Hostess During the Civil War Kate Chase was the daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Despite her youth, Kate was the reigning social queen of Washington, DC during the Civil War and a strong supporter of her widowed father’s presidential ambitions that would have made her First Lady. Katherine Jane Chase was born August 13, 1840, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of famous Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase and his second wife Eliza Ann Smith, who died shortly after Kate’s fifth birthday. Kate is best known as a society hostess during the American Civil War, and a strong supporter of her father’s political ambitions. Kate Chase…

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African Americans, Civil War Women, Women in Business

Lydia Hamilton Smith

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Abolitionist and African American Businesswoman S. Epatha Merkerson plays Lydia Hamilton Smith in the 2012 film Lincoln, alongside Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. The movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. Merkerson owes much of her fame to her role as Lt. Anita Van Buren on the original Law and Order television series. Lydia Hamilton Smith had a special relationship with U.S. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. She became Stevens’ housekeeper in 1847, and for 25 years she managed his homes and businesses. Through their partnership she gained the skills and social contacts necessary to become a successful businesswoman after his death. Lydia Hamilton was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on February 14, 1815, to…

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