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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.… (more)
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Eunice's story is fascinating, and with historian Martha Hodes' meticulous research, it comes alive. Born in 1831 and living her early years in mill towns in New Hampshire, she marries a carpenter, William Stone, at age 18, and works in the mills to help make ends meet. William follows Eunice's sister and brother-in-law to Mobile, Alabama, in search of better opportunities, and Eunice and their young son Clarence join them in late 1860, just before the outbreak of the Civil War.
Unlike the in-laws, the Stones are not economically successful in the South, but William joins the Confederate army with his brother-in-law anyway. A pregnant Eunice returns to New England with Clarence in December 1861, and spends the next eight years as a servant and washerwoman, learning that her husband died in a hospital near the end of the war.
Somehow (Eunice is with her family and this doesn't write letters), Eunice meets a wealthy Afro-Caribbean mixed-race sea captain from Grand Cayman named William Smiley Connolly, and marries him in November 1869. Soon after, they and Eunice's two children from Stone move to Grand Cayman, where Eunice's economic status is vastly improved. She and Smiley have two daughters (but lose Clarence), but the family dies in a hurricane at sea in 1877.
Hodes goes on to tell what happened to the rest of Eunice's family of origin, as well as to the descendants of Smiley Connolly from his first marriage. For me, the most interesting chapter was the last one, where Hodes details her research process and how she searched for more information about Eunice and her family
Maps and a list of family members at the front of the book, photographs and other illustrations throughout, and extensive (40 pages) endnotes, an essay on sources (22 pages), acknowledgments, permissions and illustration credits, and a 13-page index round out this excellent nonfiction.
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