A Southern Matron’s Memories   BY CAROLINE E. MERRICK NEW YORK THE GRAFTON PRESS 1901 Copyright, 1901, By CAROLINE ELIZABETH MERRICK...

COTTAGE HALL. I have not written these memoirs entirely for the amusement or instruction of my contemporaries; but I shall feel rewarded if I elicit thereby the interest and sympathy which follows an honest effort to tell the truth in the recollections of one’s life—for, after all, truth is the chief virtue of history. My ancestry may be of as little importance in itself as this book is likely to be after the lapse of a few years; yet it is satisfactory to know that your family is respectable,—e

OLD TIMES. On a clear spring morning more than fifty years ago, Cousin Antoinette and I sat on the front porch of Cottage Hall ready for a ride and waiting for the stable boy to bring up our ponies. We were in the act of mounting when my father appeared and inquired where we were going. “We shall not take a long ride, papa. We are not going anywhere, and shall return in good time for breakfast.” “You will do nothing of the kind. You have no brother here to ride with you, and it is improper for t

HOME LIFE. My home during my early married life was in the town of Clinton, La. While I never coveted the ownership of many slaves, my comfort was greatly promoted by the possession of some who had been carefully trained to be good domestics, and who were given to me by my father on my marriage. I always liked to go into the kitchen, but sometimes my cook, who had been for twelve years in training, scorned my inexperienced youth, would say emphatically, “ Go inter de house , Miss Carrie! Yer ain

RUMORS OF OUR CIVIL WAR. Mr. Merrick was elected chief-justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in the year of 1855. I went with him to New Orleans for that winter and lived at the old St. Louis hotel, taking my maid with me, but leaving my children at home in the care of their grandmother. In a letter dated May 11th, 1856, my husband writes: “I bought a house yesterday, at public auction, which I think will do very well for us, but it will cost a good deal to make it as comfortable as our home

MY DAUGHTER LAURA’S DIARY. From my daughter Laura’s diary, May 21st, 1863, let me quote: “The Yankees have been passing this house all day, regiment after regiment on their way to attack Port Hudson. Two transports have also gone by on the river crowded with soldiers. Heaven protect our beleaguered men—so few against so many! A Lieutenant Francis was perfectly radiant this morning because a boat was waiting to take his regiment (the 6th New York) North, as their time is out. He was very cordial,

WAR-MEMORIES: HOW BECKY COLEMAN WASHED HESTER WHITEFIELD’S FACE. Among the Federal vessels stationed at Red River Landing was the Manhattan, commanded by Captain Grafton, a high-minded officer as the following incident proves. A letter from Laura Ellen to her brother David, dated at Myrtle Grove, records: “Stephen Brown, mother’s head manager on this place, has been very sick. Dr. Archer, who was stopping with us all night, went to see him, and after an examination, reported that he could do not

WAR MEMORIES: THE STORY OF PATSY’S GARDEN. Our vision of the outside world of human affairs was very narrow and circumscribed in those war-times, and my seminary of five young girls was often a victim to ennui . No weekly mail, no books, no music, no new gowns from one year’s end to another. The only vital question was: “What is the war news?” There were also no coffee, no loaf-sugar, no lemons in the house. However, with plenty of milk, eggs and butter, fresh fruit and vegetables, to say nothin

HOW WOMAN CAME TO THE RESCUE. Mary Wall’s letter from Clinton, Louisiana, December 27th, 1863, contains some strong expressions showing the feeling and suffering among women at that period: “You must keep in good heart, my dearest friend, about your son David. I heard he was killed, but I have just seen Mr. Holmes, who has read in a Yankee paper: ‘Capt. Merrick, of Gen. Stafford’s staff, slightly wounded.’ When I heard your boy was killed I felt the blow, and groaned under it, for I know just ho

MISS VINE’S DINNER PARTY AND ITS ABRUPT CONCLUSION. War is demoralizing, and ever since “our army swore terribly in Flanders,” profanity has been a military sin. In my neighborhood it extended to the women and children who had never before violated the third commandment. I knew a little girl who, having seen a regiment of Federal soldiers marching along the public highway, ran to her mother crying, “The damned Yankees are coming!” She was exempt from reproof on account of the exciting nature of

OUR FEDERAL FRIENDS AND THE COLORED BROTHER. The bewilderment of the negroes in the great social upheaval that came with peace was outdone by that of the white people. The conditions of the war times had been peaceable and simple compared with the perplexities of existence now precipitated upon us. The Confederacy’s 175,000 surrendered soldiers—and these included the last fifteen-year-old boy—were scattered through the South, thousands of them disabled for work by wounds, and thousands more by i

LAURA’S DEATH IN THE EPIDEMIC OF ’78. The war fully ended and our city home recovered, we removed to New Orleans. I devoted myself wholly to my family and to domestic affairs. Friends gathered about us and some delightful people made our neighborhood very pleasant. It was in my present home that my daughter Laura was married to Louis J. Bright, and soon after, Clara was united to James B. Guthrie; both young men were settled in New Orleans, so that I was spared the pain of total separation. My s

A FIRST SPEECH AND SOME NOTED WOMEN. In those broken-hearted days Clara said with a pathetic earnestness: “Now I must try to be two daughters to you. You have not lost all your children—only your best child.” We drew nearer and more mutually dependent as time passed, each trying to fill the awful void for the other. How could I dream that the insatiable archer was only waiting, with fatal dart in rest, to claim another victim? We made common joy as well as sorrow, and tried to lead each other ou

FRANCES WILLARD. In June, 1881, I spoke by invitation before the Alumnæ Association of Whitworth College, at Brookhaven, Mississippi,—a venerable institution under the care of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. I did not give those young women strong doctrine, but I set before them the duty to “Learn the mystery of progression truly:— Nor dare to blame God’s gifts for incompleteness.” Bishop Keener, the well-known opponent of women’s public work, sat beside me on the platform. When the addres

SORROW AND SYMPATHY. Unwilling to be separated from me, Clara proposed in 1882 that she and her two children should spend the summer in New England. Her Uncle William had placed his furnished house at our disposal; so Mr. Merrick and I had the novel experience of housekeeping in the land of the Pilgrims. We had the social pleasure of entertaining most interesting people, among them Miss Lucretia Noble, the author of “A Reverend Idol.” After this visit Clara wrote a critique of this much-talked-o

BECKY SPEAKS UP IN MEETING IN THE INTERESTS OF MORALITY. The incidents which once enlivened the lives of every family that was served by the negro slave are fading from the minds of even many who were centers of those episodes. But they are of legendary interest to the younger generations. There are some things to be regretted in the negro being poured into the mold of the white man’s education. The only true national music in the United States is that known as “the negro melody.” Will not so-ca

MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE AND THE BLESSED COLORED PEOPLE. As has been intimated, I became president of the New Orleans W. C. T. U. not from deep conviction of duty on the temperance question, but because I could not resist the inspirations of Frances Willard’s convictions. Once in the work I gave my heart and my conscience to it with such measure of success that in January, 1883, a State convention was called to meet in New Orleans in the hall of the Y. M. C. A. Miss Willard was again present, and wa

NERVOUS PROSTRATION AND A VENERABLE COUSIN. I once heard a woman say that she had lived half a lifetime before she realized that the commandments were written for her. In a vague sort of way she had appropriated, “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not bear false witness;” but she did not intend to do these things—the commandments must be for those who did. Her dumb amazement may be imagined on hearing a venerable and saintly soul state that she was so grateful to God that in her long life she h

ENTER—AS AN EPISODE—MRS. COLUMBIANA PORTERFIELD. There are characters of such marked and peculiar individuality that they loom upon one’s consciousness like Stonehenge, or any other magnificent ruin, as Charles Lamb says of Mrs. Conrady’s ugliness; and their discovery “is an era in one’s existence.” In this way one of my intimate associates, Mrs. Columbiana Porterfield, stands preeminent in my early and later recollections; but I was sorry to see into her. Every time we were together it impresse

THE SOUTHERN WOMAN BECOMES A “CLUBABLE” BEING. In every individual life there enter events which in their enlarged influence are analogous to epoch-making periods in the nation’s history. Such, surely, was my meeting with Susan B. Anthony, when she visited the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. I had long kept a vivid and dear picture of her in the inner sanctuary of my mind; had become acquainted through the press with the vigor of her intellect and the native independence and integrity of her cha

“THE BEST IS YET TO BE.” Why should women regret the golden period of youth? There are things finer and more precious than inexperience and a fair face. When a friend of Petrarch bemoaned the age revealed in his white temples, he replied: “Nay, be sorry rather that ever I was young, to be a fool.” Joyous and lovely as youth is—and it always seems a pity to be old in the springtime when everything else is young—how many of us would be willing to be again in the bonds of crudities, the embarrassme