A Virginia Girl in the Civil War

“This history was told over the tea-cups. One winter, in the South, I had for my neighbor a gentle, little brown-haired lady, who spent many evenings at my fireside, as I at hers, where with bits of needlework in our hand we gossiped away as women will. I discovered her …

“This history was told over the tea-cups. One winter, in the South, I had for my neighbor a gentle, little brown-haired lady, who spent many evenings at my fireside, as I at hers, where with bits of needlework in our hand we gossiped away as women will. I discovered her experiences in the War between the States and it made an interest topic. Wishing to share with others the reminiscences she gave me, I seek to present them here in her own words. Just as they stand they are, I believe, unique, possessing at once the charm of romance and veracity of history. They supply a graphic, if artless, pictures of the social life of one of the most interesting and dramatic periods of our national existence. Her husbands real name and others have been suppressed and substituted. . . This is the essential value of A Virginia Girl in the Civil War: it shows us simply, sincerely, and unconsciously what life meant to an American woman during the vital and formative period of American history. That this American woman was also a Virginian with all a Virginian’s love for her Commonwealth and loyalty to the South.” ~ Myrta Lockett Avary, November 1902.

Being a true story of a war in which heroes abounded, the book is replete with the types that are the revered deities of Southern homes, and the writer possesses the rare genius of bringing the reader close enough to feel the grasp of manly hands and hear the sound of voices that have long since joined the invincible army that silently marches toward eternity.

Read this book and enjoy it for its literary and pleasurable past-time merits; it has both. It has something far greater in addition. It will inspire you to do as our heroine did: teach your children and grandchildren the purity of the Southern cause, and look unto her gallant men and women who lived and overcame this time of severe testing for inspiration. Their mettle was proven. May yours be also.