The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century

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W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 - Biography & Autobiography - 384 pages
"Historian Martha Hodes brings us into the extraordinary world of Eunice Connolly. Born white and poor in New England, Eunice moved from countryside to factory city, worked in the mills, then followed her husband to the Deep South. When the Civil War came, Eunice's brothers joined the Union army while her husband fought and died for the Confederacy. Back in New England, a widow and the mother of two, Eunice barely got by as a washerwoman. Four years later, she fell in love with a black sea captain, married him, and moved to his home in the West Indies. Following every lead in a collection of 500 family letters, Hodes traced Eunice's footsteps and met descendants along the way. This story of misfortune and defiance takes up grand themes of American history--opportunity and racism, war and freedom--and illuminates the lives of ordinary people in the past.--From publisher description"--OCLC
 

Contents

A Story and a History
17
A Carpenters Wife
39
Yankee in the Deep South
79
Servant and Washerwoman
119
From Widow to Bride
161
The Sea Captains Wife
205
Hurricane
243
Searching for Eunice
275
Notes
299
Essay on Sources
339
Acknowledgments
361
Permissions and Illustration Credits
367
Index
371
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