She grew up in Kentucky, and attended the log cabin school taught by "Daddy" Lincoln, a cousin of Abraham Lincoln.
She brought with her to Iowa the hospitable Southern disposition that made her a favorite in the polite society of her day.
She was a talented musician and possessed a well-trained voice which was much enjoyed by her many audiences, none more so than the soldiers-in-training at Camp McClelland, near Davenport, Iowa, where she often appeared. Later, she and others were admitted to the stockade on Rock Island, Illinois, where they sang for the Rebel prisoners incarcerated there during the Civil War.
The appearance of this singing party of fine young women was one of the too few gladdening moments for the weary, homesick boys and men of the sunny south, held here in the cold north where thousands of them died of pneumonia, and were buried in the plot beside their gloomy, frigid prison.
from family records
|
