Eliza Frances Andrews

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Eliza Frances Andrews
Photograph of Andrews, 1865
Photograph of Andrews, 1865
Born(1840-08-10)August 10, 1840
Washington, Georgia, United States
DiedJanuary 21, 1931(1931-01-21) (aged 90)
Rome, Georgia, United States
Notable worksA Family Secret
Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl: 1864-65

Eliza Frances Andrews (August 10, 1840 - January 21, 1931) was a popular American writer of the Gilded Age. Her shorter works were published in popular magazines and papers, including the New York World and Godey's Lady's Book.[1] Her longer works include The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908) and two botany textbooks.[2]

Andrews gained fame in the fields of literature, education, and science, and had success both as an essayist and a novelist.[3] Financial difficulties led her to begin teaching after the deaths of her parents, though she continued to publish her writing. In her retirement, she published two textbooks on botany entitled Botany All the Year Round and Practical Botany,[3] the latter of which became popular in Europe and was translated for schools in France.[4]

Biography

Early life

Eliza Frances "Fanny" Andrews was born on August 10, 1840, in Washington, Georgia, the second daughter of Annulet Ball and Garnett Andrews, a jude in Georgia's Superior Courts.[5] Her father was a lawyer, judge, and plantation owner, possessing around two hundred enslaved people. Andrews grew up on the family estate, Haywood, the name of which she would later use in a pseudonym, "Elzey Hay".[6] attended the local Ladies' Seminary school, and later graduated among the first class of students from LaGrange Female College in 1857.[3] She was well-versed in literature, music, and the arts, and was conversant in both French and Latin.[5] Upon graduating, Andrews returned home to live with her father. Around this time Southern states began to secede from the Union. Though her father was outspoken against secession, three of Andrews' brothers enlisted in the Confederate States Army. Andrews and her sisters also supported the Confederacy.[5]

During the

Catherine Littlefield Greene, a noted supporter of Eli Whitney's cotton gin.[5]

Teaching career

Garnett Andrews died in 1873, leaving his family in a difficule financial position. The family sold the plantation and requiring Fanny Andrews sought paid work.

Yazoo, Mississippi, where she remained for seven years.[5] She resigned the position in the early 1880s in order to recuperate from a serious illness. Andrews then returned to Washington to become the principal at her former seminary school. She received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia in 1882.[3] In 1885 she moved to Macon, where she worked as a professor of French and literature from 1886 to 1896.[8] She also worked as a school librarian during this time period. She returned once again to Washington and devoted herself full-time to lecturing and writing.[5]

Personal beliefs

Women in society

Andrews’ first novel, A Family Secret (1876),[3] paints a vivid image of the role of women in the post war South. She remarks upon the misery inherent in marrying for money and writes at one point "Oh, the slavery it is to be a woman and not a fool." At the same time, she believed that the domestic wife and mother was the only acceptable role for women in Southern society, and she considered teaching "a mental tread-mill, a dull road traveled over and over requiring only patience."[7]: 32  As she observed in the introduction to her Wartime Journal that “In the lifetime of a single generation the people of the South have been called upon to pass through changes that the rest of the world has taken centuries to accomplish”[9][10]

Andrews in 1897

Post civil-war

The influences of the

universal male suffrage due to what she viewed as African Americans' ignorance of informed voting practices.[7]: 29–31  Her views regarding black Americans reflect contemporary Southern fears of black enfranchisement
.

Andrew's essays and novels about women's roles provide strong, often conflicting opinions about ideal femeninity, reflecting the contrast in her commitments to both Southern idealism and her own professional independence. Her early works in the late 1860s argued against women's suffrage, as women's position under the protection of men granted them social privileges, such as perceived superior moral integrity, that they would forfeit if given the right to vote.[7]: 32–33  These ideas contrast with her stated belief that women have similar governing potential to men and were capable of advancing society through private, professional work as teachers, doctors, and merchants.[7]: 32 

Politics and race

From 1899 to 1918, Andrews proclaimed herself a

racial separation that mandated "the black man to improve himself without interfering in the white man's civilization."[7]: 50  Her views were seen through her writings on the superiority of the white race over the black and boasts that the color line had been preserved in her home town with the help of the Ku Klux Klan
.

Botanist

While teaching at

Naples
and accept the honor.

Andrews wrote her last article, on the

white oak, in 1926.[3]

After her death, Andrews bequeathed the royalties from her books to the city of

Rome, Georgia for a municipal forest reserve, although the city eventually turned the money back over to her estate due to a lack of funds, likely related to the Great Depression.[4]: 77–78  She also donated more than 3,000 plant specimens from her personal collection to the Alabama Department of Agriculture.[3]

Andrews died in Rome, GA on January 21, 1931, at the age of ninety.

Washington, GA.[5]

Gallery

  • Eliza's father Judge Garnett Andrews 1827
    Eliza's father Judge Garnett Andrews 1827
  • Eliza's mother Annulet Andrews, 1827
    Eliza's mother Annulet Andrews, 1827
  • Eliza's younger sister Metta Andrews, 1872
    Eliza's younger sister Metta Andrews, 1872
  • Haywood Plantation, where Eliza was born
    Haywood Plantation, where Eliza was born

Bibliography

  • The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865.
  • Journal of a Georgia Women, 1870-1872.
  • A Family Secret (novel)
  • Prince Hal: Or, The Romance of a Rich Young Man
  • Botany All the Year Round
  • A Practical Course in Botany

References

  1. ^ a b c d Cook, Cita (February 2000). "Andrews, Eliza Frances". American National Biography Online. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  2. ISBN 1558624333
    .
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Andrews, Eliza Frances (Fanny)". Georgia Women of Achievement. 4 May 2014. Archived from the original on 2 March 2011. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  4. ^
    JSTOR 40581467
    .
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h S. Kittrell, Rushing (10 January 2014). "Eliza Frances Andrews (1840-1931)". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 14 October 2012. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  6. ^ Coleman, Kenneth; Gurr, Charles Stephen (1983). "Andrews, Eliza Frances". Dictionary of Georgia Biography. Athens: University of Georgia Press. p. 29.
  7. ^
    JSTOR 40584807
    .
  8. ^ The Georgia Historical Quarterly, March, 21, 1986
  9. ^ Andrews, Eliza Frances (1908). The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865. New York: D. Appleton and Company. p. 1.
  10. ^ Ford, Charlotte A. (2005). "Eliza Frances Andrews: A Fruitful Life of Toil". Georgia Historical Quarterly. 89 (1): 25–56. Retrieved 19 February 2018.
  • Ohles, John F. Biographical Dictionary of American Educators, Vol. 1. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978.

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Eliza Frances Andrews
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eliza Frances Andrews.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eliza_Frances_Andrews&oldid=1219252385"