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Chapter One. 1861–1880: Early Life and Career
- Texas A&M University Press
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1 Chapter One residents of petersburg, virginia, who numbered about eighteen thousand in 1860, realized that the election of Abraham Lincoln in November of that year threatened the economic and social systems on which the city, state, and region were based.1 In Petersburg, as in much of the South, the tension consumed the minds and emotions of the residents. The first half of 1861 saw southern states respond with a flurry of secessions in response to Lincoln’s election. South Carolina seceded in December 1860, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas in the weeks between January 10 and February 9, 1861. February brought the birth of the Confederate States of America and the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as its president. In April, with the attack on Fort Sumter, the Civil War began. May 6 made it official: Tennessee and Arkansas joined the secession, and the Confederacy recognized a state of war with the United States.2 Against this backdrop, Anna Hardwicke was born on May 7, 1861. A girl’s birth in Petersburg, Virginia, to native Virginians Martha and John Benjamin Hardwicke a day after the Confederacy declared war against the United States hardly seems of historic consequence. However, the historical circumstances surrounding her birth, that she was born a southerner in a state that would soon join the Confederacy, would be of consequence to newborn Anna for the rest of her life. Anna’s parents were of old Virginian stock, descended from established families. John Benjamin Hardwick, or J. B. as he was called, was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, on August 9, 1830, to Samuel P. Hardwicke and Lucy Hudson Flood, the daughter of Capt. John Flood and granddaughter of the Reverend Noah Flood. J. B., named for his grandfather Hardwicke, a Baptist preacher, was the oldest of fifteen 1861–1880 Early Life and Career call her a citizen 2 children, two of whom died in infancy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given clergy on both his paternal and maternal sides, J. B. was religiously active as a youth. In 1842, at the age of twelve, he made a profession of faith and united with the Enon Baptist Church. Ten years later, in 1852, he became an ordained minister serving two Baptist churches in Campbell County, Virginia, before moving to Greenfield, Virginia. A “ponderous” man, J. B. stood six feet tall and was possessed of stern, square features, dark eyes, a full mustache and beard, and mass of thick, dark hair.3 Despite his imposing features, J. B. would be remembered by family members as “empathetically a peacemaker though of impulsive nature.” A gifted speaker and writer, he swiftly became “prominent among the young preachers of the country.”4 In Greenfield, he worked to rescue churches from the “growing influence of anti-mission teachers.”5 He remained in Greenfield until 1860, when he moved with his young family to Petersburg, Virginia.6 J. B. married Anna’s mother, Martha Jane Dews, on November 6, 1855, when both were twenty-five years old. Martha was the daughter of native Virginians, William Dews and Nancy Ellington Dews. Her parents had the financial means to “give her every opportunity,” and she has been described as lovely, “possessing the usual accomplishments of the Virginia belle of the day.”7 She was, in addition, “far in advance in mental qualifications,” with a gift for figures and a love of study, despite an unremarkable education that, as was the custom for Virginia belles of the time, ended when she was sixteen. The education available for women of South during her youth in the 1850s was “light, physically and mentally.” Girls at boarding schools and seminaries studied toward “‘a superficial knowledge of twenty branches of learning’ without a true comprehension of any.”8 Despite the early end to her formal education, Martha would continue attempts to enrich herself through study throughout her life.9 Martha’s beauty, accomplishments, and social standing made her highly sought after as a wife. Despite this relatively comfortable beginning, however, Martha already had experienced enormous loss in the short years of her adult life. She was a widow when she married J. B. Hardwicke, having previously been married to Dr. William Holland. While married to Holland, she bore three children, all of whom died in infancy. A picture of her as a young woman portrays a slight, serious-looking woman with dark hair and eyes. Although she appears timid in her picture, she is reported to have had a...