Georgia Sixth
2nd Lieutenant
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2011
- Location
- Texas
This lecture was linked in JerseyBart's running update on the C-SPAN events and talks related to the Civil War.
I just watched the interview with Angela Elder, a doctorate student at U. of Georgia whose researching widowhood in the south and how the women coped, etc. It's about a 20 minute interview, so not in depth, but there's some interesting stuff in there. One is how the widows became a presence in the inboxes for politicians as they were requesting public help. I had not pondered before how prevalent widows must have been, as so many men proportionally had been lost in the south, nor had I pondered just how young these widows were, most with kids in tow.
Her final anecdote is surreal: a woman would not accept the news of her husband's death unless she could see his lifeless face. She traveled to the hospital where he had died and had them dig him up. She was so desperate to know for sure, she dropped to the ground and dug with her bare fingers through the grave's dirt until she saw the face of her husband.
The link:
Angela Elder Confederate Widows | Video | C-SPAN.org
I just watched the interview with Angela Elder, a doctorate student at U. of Georgia whose researching widowhood in the south and how the women coped, etc. It's about a 20 minute interview, so not in depth, but there's some interesting stuff in there. One is how the widows became a presence in the inboxes for politicians as they were requesting public help. I had not pondered before how prevalent widows must have been, as so many men proportionally had been lost in the south, nor had I pondered just how young these widows were, most with kids in tow.
Her final anecdote is surreal: a woman would not accept the news of her husband's death unless she could see his lifeless face. She traveled to the hospital where he had died and had them dig him up. She was so desperate to know for sure, she dropped to the ground and dug with her bare fingers through the grave's dirt until she saw the face of her husband.
The link:
Angela Elder Confederate Widows | Video | C-SPAN.org
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