Memoirs of a Southern Woman "Within the Lines"

By Mary Polk Branch

"Memoirs of a Southern Woman Within the Lines...by Mary Polk Branch...relates the experiences of a southern woman during the Civil War...goes on to describe the South in ante-bellum days. The author is a relative of President Polk." -Boston Globe, November 12, 1927

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookcrop
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781087987910

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Memoirs of a

Southern Woman

Within the Lines

Mary Polk Branch

(1830-1918)

Originally published,

1912

Contents

FOREWORD.

CHAPTER I. IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

FOREWORD.

        THIS little book is written for my children and the descendants of those whose lives are herein chronicled.

        From its perusal may they learn still more to reverence the memory of their forefathers, and to prize the heritage left by them of noble and honorable lives.

        To this record I have added my memories of the home of my youth, under Southern skies. Then later the experiences of a Southern woman during the Civil War, within the lines.

        This long retrospect of mine, a retrospect of eighty years, portrays faithfully life in the South as it was in ante-bellum times, and afterward in her mourning vestments, the beautiful, heroic South.

        I write with a loving hand as I pay this tribute to the past.

MARY POLK BRANCH.

December, 1911. MEMOIRS

OF A SOUTHERN WOMAN

CHAPTER I. IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.

        My father, Dr. Wm. Julius Polk, was married to my mother, Mary Rebecca Long, at Mt. Gallant, Halifax County, North Carolina, in 1814.

        Mt. Gallant was an estate, inherited by my mother, from her grandfather, Gen. Allen Jones. In 1828 they moved from North Carolina to Columbia, Tennessee, where five brothers had already preceded my father - making their homes on plantations near the town. My father was a devoted member of the Episcopal church, and noted for the purity and integrity of his character - his word being considered as good as his bond.

        He was elected again and again president of the First Bank, in Columbia, and for years trustee of the old St. Peter's church.

        My mother was an able assistant in all good works, and the blameless lives of this old couple were marked by deeds of neighborly kindness, charity and hospitality, for which the South was so noted in ante-bellum days.

        Their nearest neighbor was Bishop Otey, who lived on an adjoining place, called Ravencroft, and as both he and my father had a keen sense of humor, many a good joke had they at the expense of the other.

        My mother and the bishop, both fine chess players, usually ended the evening with a hotly contested game of chess - the victor triumphant and the vanquished insisting that the battle should be renewed at a later day.

        My mother was a woman of beauty and unusual courage. She needed it as she said farewell to her three soldier sons, and bade them do their duty. But she had higher attributes than courage - the charity which thinketh no evil, the love which includes the sinning and the sinless, recognizing the stumbling blocks that beset our path. All beautiful things appealed to her, flowers and poetry. She often recited verses that she had learned in her youth. She seemed to me to be a link connecting us to a far-off period, binding the present to the past. The rare courtesy of her manner, which told of her gentle breeding, combined with a slight formality, which, while very kindly, precluded any familiarity. As I have looked at her lovely old face I have thought her the embodiment