The Women of the Confederacy

by J. L. Underwood

ANNANDALE—TWO HEROINES OF MISSISSIPPI

[By Anna B. A. Brown, in Memphis Commercial World.]

In these hurried days, when we spend the major portion of our lives trying to keep up with the electric currents that control the universe, it is good to be able to turn aside for a while in the byways of the South and feel the restfulness of old plantation life, whether it be a reality or an echo from the past. A day spent in touch with old Southern home life is a day full of restful peace and happy memories.

In Madison County, Mississippi, one finds many bits of ante-bellum life that the turbulent tide of commerce has not yet swept away—big plantations, historic old mansions, tumble-down slave quarters—that are the abiding proofs of the prosperity and hospitality of a people who lived and loved when knighthood was yet in flower, and whose children live yet to preserve the old traditions. 96 Many of the old plantations are still tilled by the descendants of the original owners. Many have passed into stranger’s hands. Some stand tenantless and lonely, with ghostly visitants slipping at midnight down the great stairways to tread a stately measure on the ball floor, a silent assemblage of long-ago belles and beaux returned from the cities of the dead or from the still trenches of Seven Pines, Chickamauga, or Shiloh.

One of these silent homes is Annandale, a bit of historic Mississippi architecture that stands near Canton, once the home of Southern chivalry and romance, now empty, save for the memories that cluster thickly within its walls. Annandale is the property, and was until recently the home of the Mississippi branch of the Johnstone family, and preserves to memory the name of the county in Scotland that cradled the ancestors who bore this illustrious name. It is still known as their home, though Vicksburg now claims the daughter of the house, and only in the summers are the doors opened again for that lavish hospitality for which the old place was noted. Two brothers of the Johnstone family came over from Scotland in 1734, having been sent by George III, on business of great import to the colonies. One had the appointment of governor to his majesty’s colony of North Carolina, the other that of surveyor-general. The Johnstone family remained loyal to their king as long as native pride would permit, and then, true to the spirit that demanded the Magna Charta at Runnymede centuries before, they went to the American settlements in the fight for liberty. They were prominent in the Revolution, and after the war took part in the political work of building up the nation.

John T. Johnstone, a prominent member of this family, moved from North Carolina to Mississippi in 1836 and bought large tracts of land in Madison County. On the plantation near Annandale he built a comfortable home—a fine house for those days of pioneer effort. His neighbors were the families of Hardeman, Hinton, Ricks, Winters and Christmas, and there are still marvelous tales told in that locality of the lavish manner of living, the wonderful hospitality dispensed and the gay companies 97 that assembled in the old home. A few years of this charmed life Mr. Johnstone called his, and then he was gathered to his illustrious fathers, and the burden of this great estate fell on the shoulders of his young widow. She stood the test of generalship, as other Southern women of her day have done, and the affairs of the plantation, the slave quarters and the household moved as smoothly as clock work and success smiled on her. The material side of her plantation’s progress did not overshadow the religious side, and services for bond and free were held daily in a gothic church on the estate, the chapel of the cross which Mrs. Johnstone had erected in memory of her husband. The daughter of the house was carefully educated, and as she neared womanhood Mrs. Johnstone had a new home built, the present Annandale, and the same lavish hospitality was continued.

Then came the war. There was no husband, brother or son to send to the front, but the women, true to the patriotic sentiments of their house, gave of their best. The big mansion was turned into a factory for supplying Confederate needs. Mrs. Johnstone and her fair daughter, Helen, became the head of a busy body of working women, who gave of their time and talent for the South. All day was heard the whir of spinning-wheels, the slipping of the shuttles in the looms; all day busy fingers carded, wove, spun and sewed, that the soldiers might be made more comfortable. One company of soldiers was equipped throughout the war solely at Miss Johnstone’s expense, while she and her mother furnished clothing to two hundred others. The setting of dainty stitches, the manufacture of rolled and whipped ruffles, were laid aside for the time. The rich carpets were torn from the floors and made into blankets; the rare bronzes and brasses were torn from their pedestals or their fastenings and sent to the foundries to be made into cannon; silk dresses were transformed into banners to lead the gray-clad men to victory, and dainty linen and cambric garments and rare household napery and linen were ruthlessly torn in strips to bandage the wounds of the men in the hospitals. 98 The granaries, smokehouses, and wine cellars gave up their stores for the Confederacy, the wealth of these two loyal women being laid gladly on their country’s altar. Yet, through all this troublous season, hospitality and merriment still reigned. The rebel lads adored the loyal women; the Union soldiers tried more than once to burn the house that sheltered such secessionists.

During the war the fair daughter of the house was married to Rev. George Carroll Harris, of Nashville, and for many years rector of Christ Church, and widely known throughout the South.

In 1880 Mrs. Johnstone died, and historic Annandale passed into her daughter’s hands, and is still owned by her. A few years ago the son of Dr. and Mrs. Harris, George Harris, married Miss Cecile Nugent, of Jackson, Mississippi, and they live on his place in the Delta, and with the marriage of the daughter Helen to the son of the late Bishop Thompson the younger generation of Annandale closed another chapter of romances for the old home. But even though the windows are darkened and no material form passes daily over the threshold, the inner air is still palpitant with memories, and who knows what gay revels the ghostly companies of the past may not hold in the grand salon when midnight has come and the human world is wrapped in slumber?