Annie Gordon WashingtonOn May 25, 1855, Washington underwent a conversion experience at the African Baptist Church in Fredericksburg, and was baptized in the Rappahannock River on June 13, 1856, by the Reverend William F. Broaddus, of the Fredericksburg Baptist Church.
On January 3, 1862, Washington married Annie E. Gordon, a free black woman he had courted since the spring of 1853. They had six sons, one of whom died in infancy.
Civil War
On January 1, 1859, Catherine Taliaferro hired out John Washington to her neighbor William T. Hart. A year later, on January 1, 1860, Washington was sent to labor six days a week in the Alexander and Gibbs tobacco factory in Fredericksburg. On January 1, 1861, Washington went to work at a restaurant in Richmond owned by the Greek immigrant Speredone Zetelle. After about six months, Zetelle sold the establishment to a German immigrant, Casper Wendlinger. Washington described both masters as “low, mean and course” men who “treated their Ser
SUMMARY
Flora Cooke Stuart was the wife of Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart and the daughter of Union general Philip St. George Cooke. She met Stuart, a dashing subordinate of her father, while living in the Kansas Territory in the 1850s, and after marrying, the two settled in Virginia. Secession, however, split their family, with Cooke, a respected cavalryman, remaining in the United States Army and Stuart eventually becoming chief of cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. “He will regret it but once & that will be continually,” Stuart said of his father-in-law’s decision; he even renamed his and Flora’s months’-old son, Philip St. George Cooke Stuart, after himself, James Ewell Brown Stuart Jr. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), Flora Stuart spent as much time as possible in camp with her husband, and chafed at the generous attention he received from admiring women in Virginia and across the South. When Stuart died after being wounded at the Battle of Yel
Messenger foundered until 1835 when, on the recommendation of John Pendleton Kennedy, White hired Poe, then an unknown and impoverished poet, to serve as the journal’s literary editor. Under Poe’s direction, the journal greatly increased circulation, improved in quality, and developed connections with the northern literary establishment. But the position, which required long hours of reviewing manuscripts many of them poorly written severely taxed Poe’s patience and endurance. He left the journal in 1837 to pursue a writing career in the North, leaving White and his assistant, Matthew F. Maury, to produce the journal. Although a capable printer, White had little education or literary acumen. Under his direction, the journal published a hodgepodge of personal essays, tedious treatises on the classics, occasional poems, and effusive reviews.