Like many other little girls the world over, I devoured Louisa May Alcott’s famous quartet of novels several times: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo’s Boys. I giggled, wept, and was always slightly disappointed that Jo married Professor Bhaer – although I was glad she was so happy running her own school. Then I grew up, and forgot about […]
Tag: 1860s
HISTORY: Letter from a Civil War Surgeon
Dr. Isambard Jackson presided over The Poplars during the Civil War, when it was commandeered as a Field Hospital by the Confederacy. His letters to his sister, Maria, contain two brief references to Clarissa Lowell, a volunteer nurse who vanished in the spring of 1864, during one of the most brutal months of the entire […]
MISSING: Clarissa, 1864
Although she would never, of course, confess it aloud, Clara was not looking forward to the end of the war. She could not imagine returning to her old, ornamental existence. Sometimes, as she spent her days tending to the weakened and dying, bandaging bloody stumps and carrying buckets of the foulest slop imaginable, she flashed […]