A Black Women's Civil War Memoir

5fish

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Susie King Taylor

Thus, I found Susie King Taylor. Taylor is one of the only African American woman memoirists from the Civil War. Her book, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, chronicles her role as a laundress, cook, and nurse for the 33rd United States Colored Troops, known also as the 1st South Carolina Volunteers.

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The Book Summary...
Negro narratives of the Civil War are few. Susie King Taylor's 1902 slender volume, "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp," written with an earnest simplicity, records in camp the experience of a woman born a slave who was for four years a regimental laundress and nurse in the Thirty-third United States Colored Infantry, earlier First South Carolina Colored Troop.

In April 1862, Susie Baker and many other African Americans fled to St. Simons Island, occupied at the time by Union forces. While at the school on St. Simons Island, Baker married Edward King, a black noncommissioned officer in the First South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent (later reflagged as 33rd United States Colored Troops). For three years she moved with her husband's and brothers' regiment, serving as nurse and laundress, and teaching many of the black soldiers to read and write during their off-duty hours.

As Taylor notes, "There are many people who do not know what some of the colored women did during the war. There were hundreds of them who assisted the Union soldiers by hiding them and helping them to escape. Many were punished for taking food to the prison stockades for the prisoners."

In describing Confederates' treacherous use of blackface, Taylor writes:

"When the rebels saw these boats, they ran out of the city. The regiment landed and marched up the street, where they spied the rebels who had fled from the city. They were hiding behind a house about a mile or so away, their faces blackened to disguise themselves as negroes, and our boys, as they advanced toward them, halted a second, saying, 'They are black men! Let them come to us.'"

About the author:

"Susie King Taylor (1848 –1912) was the first Black Army nurse.
She tended to an all Black army troop named the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union), later redesignated the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, where her husband served, for four years during the Civil War. Despite her service, like many African-American nurses, she was never paid for her work. As the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, she was the only African-American woman to publish a memoir of her wartime experiences. She was also the first African American to teach openly in a school for former slaves in Georgia. At this school in Savannah, Georgia, she taught children during the day and adults at night. She is in the 2018 class of inductees of the Georgia Women of Achievement.

LINK:https://www.amazon.com/Reminiscence...7G0A5VKMP9A&psc=1&refRID=SWV396F5N7G0A5VKMP9A
 

byron ed

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See, that's just interesting. More context that anyone studying the war needs to have.
 

5fish

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Here are here last years...

LINK: https://www.nps.gov/people/susie-king-taylor.htm

Taylor originally worked as the regimental laundress and throughout the war would perform the essential duties of cooking and washing. However, her literacy proved most useful and enabled her to serve as the reading instructor for the regiment of former slaves. The unit’s white abolitionist colonel, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, later wrote of his men, “Their love of the spelling-book is perfectly inexhaustible.”

Taylor married Sergeant Edward King of the First South Carolina in 1862. Together they remained with the unit until it was mustered out of service in 1866. Postwar, the Kings moved to Savannah, Georgia. She hoped to continue her teaching career and opened a private school for the children of freedmen. Unfortunately, her husband died the same year, and a public school opening caused her private school to fail. By 1868, Taylor was forced to find work as a domestic servant.

She moved to Boston in 1872 where she married Russell Taylor in 1879. She devoted much of the rest of her life to work with the Woman’s Relief Corps, a national organization for female Civil War veterans. She died in 1912, ten years after publishing her memoir.


How she learn to read..

Baker, the daughter of slaves, was born in Liberty County on August 6, 1848. When she was about seven years old, her owner allowed her to go to Savannah to live with her grandmother. Despite Georgia's harsh laws against the formal education of African Americans, she attended two secret schools taught by black women. From them she gained the rudiments of literacy, then extended her education with the help of two white youths, both of whom knowingly violated law and custom.

Snip.. Teacher... https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/susie-king-taylor-1848-1912

In April 1862 Baker and many other African Americans fled to St. Simons Island, occupied at the time by Union forces. Within days her educational advantages came to the attention of army officers, who offered to obtain books for her if she would organize a school. She thereby became the first black teacher for freed African American students to work in a freely operating freedmen's school in Georgia. She taught forty children in day school and "a number of adults who came to me nights, all of them so eager to learn to read, to read above anything else." She taught there until October 1862, when the island was evacuated.

Snip...


While at the school on St. Simons Island, Baker married Edward King, a black noncommissioned officer in the Union forces. For three years she moved with her husband's and brothers' regiment, serving as nurse and laundress, and teaching many of the black soldiers to read and write during their off-duty hours. In 1866 she and Edward returned to Savannah, where she established a school for the freed children. Edward King died in September 1866, a few months before the birth of their first child. In 1867 she returned to her native Liberty County to establish another school. In 1868 she again relocated to Savannah, where she continued teaching freedmen for another year and supported herself through small tuition charges, never receiving aid from the northern freedmen's aid organizations.
In the 1870s King traveled to Boston as a domestic servant of a wealthy white family. While there she met and married Russell Taylor. She remained in Boston for the rest of her life, returning to the South only occasionally. After a trip to Louisiana in the 1890s to care for a dying son, she wrote her Reminiscences, which were privately published in 1902. She died ten years later. In 2019 the Georgia Historical Society erected a historical marker honoring King Taylor near the Midway First Presbyterian Church in Midway, Georgia.
 

byron ed

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...perhaps I misunderstood.
I should explain that my civilian reenacting impression is literally "Underground Railroad" agent / "Contraband" camp worker, and as such I could share stories* My camp is typically adjacent the Union Army camps with the other "camp follower" depictions such as Sanitary Commission, laundry, drovers etc.

Once it's understood what my impression is all about, it's been a highly-appreciated addition to events, partly because lately civic venues are having to show that their events are "inclusive" in content.** That's a whole topic by itself.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* I get passing Rebs giving me a sort of period "high five" thinking I'm a Southern slave patroller. At times African-American spectators give me the "stink-eye" for the same reason. I've even seen them hold back their children from my camp. I've found that the hail "welcome friend!" works well to bring them in for a proper explanation.

So this is not a scenario well-understood by other reenactors, or by some venues -- before I have a chance to explain it for their approval.

One problem with my gig is that an UGRR agent in the field looks no different than a Southern slave patroller. In my camp are a pistol, a rifle, binoculars as well as ankle shackles and collars -- as were removed from fugitives as they entered Union lines -- and slave posters as well (on closer inspection folks see these are for anti-slavery meetings, USCT recruitment and slave-catcher warnings and not escaped slave reward posters (though some of those I display for reference).

** i.e. there's just not enough U.S. Colored Troop impressions to go around. I connect with and recommend them whenever I can.
 
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jgoodguy

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I should explain that my civilian reenacting impression is literally "Underground Railroad" agent / "Contraband" camp worker, and as such I could share stories* My camp is typically adjacent the Union Army camps with the other "camp follower" depictions such as Sanitary Commission, laundry, drovers etc.

Once it's understood what my impression is all about, it's been a highly-appreciated addition to events, partly because lately civic venues are having to show that their events are "inclusive" in content.** That's a whole topic by itself.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* I get passing Rebs giving me a sort of period "high five" thinking I'm a Southern slave patroller. At times African-American spectators give me the "stink-eye" for the same reason. I've even seen them hold back their children from my camp. I've found that the hail "welcome friend!" works well to bring them in for a proper explanation.

So this is not a scenario well-understood by other reenactors, or by some venues -- before I have a chance to explain it for their approval.

One problem with my gig is that an UGRR agent in the field looks no different than a Southern slave patroller. In my camp are a pistol, a rifle, binoculars as well as ankle shackles and collars -- as were removed from fugitives as they entered Union lines -- and slave posters as well (on closer inspection folks see these are for anti-slavery meetings, USCT recruitment and slave-catcher warnings and not escaped slave reward posters (though some of those I display for reference).

** i.e. there's just not enough U.S. Colored Troop impressions to go around. I connect with and recommend them whenever I can.
Good impression, but it looks like you need a billboard to explain it to the uninformed. Living history, particularly the Civilian impressions are playing second fiddle to the bang bang on the field. I have not been to a reenactment in years. My wife does a living history Civil War female dress impression. She talks about fashion had fabrics. I have a traveling sewing machine show 1860s through early 1900s with machines and explaining the tech. A bit late for civil war, but the tech is like a foreign country for most. Of course everyone runs outside to watch the cannons go off.
 

byron ed

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...Living history, particularly the Civilian impressions are playing second fiddle to the bang bang on the field.... Of course everyone runs outside to watch the cannons go off.
In my experience; and I am a uniformed Artillery reenactor as well, battles to me are merely the thing that interrupt the event for an hour or so each day.
 

jgoodguy

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In my experience; and I am a uniformed Artillery reenactor as well, battles to me are merely the thing that interrupt the event for an hour or so each day.
I agree. I was recruited on occasion by understaffed artillery units. At the last, I sat with the other old farts, until the survivors straggled back into camp.
 
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