Women's Biography

Motivated by a deeply rooted sense of place and community, Appalachian women have long fought against the damaging effects of industrialization. In this collection of interviews, sociologist Shannon Elizabeth Bell presents the voices of twelve Central Appalachian women, environmental justice activists fighting against mountaintop removal mining and its devastating effects on public health, regional ecology, and community well-being. Each woman narrates her own personal story of injustice and tells how that experience led her to activism. The interviews--many of them illustrated by the women's "photostories"--describe obstacles, losses, and tragedies. But they also tell of new communities and personal transformations catalyzed through activism. Bell supplements each narrative with careful notes that aid the reader while amplifying the power and flow of the activists' stories. Bell's analysis outlines the relationship between Appalachian women's activism and the gendered responsibilities they feel within their families and communities. Ultimately, Bell argues that these women draw upon a broader "protector identity" that both encompasses and extends the identity of motherhood that has often been associated with grassroots women's activism. As protectors, the women challenge dominant Appalachian gender expectations and guard not only their families but also their homeplaces, their communities, their heritage, and the endangered mountains that surround them. 30% of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to organizations fighting for environmental justice in Central Appalachia. Publisher: University of Illinois Press. Paperback, 224 Pages. Measures 8.9"x6"x0.7" . Weighs 12.3 oz.

As the Civil War raged, Confederate brigadier general J.E.B. Stuart entrusted a secret album to Laura Ratcliffe, a young girl in Fairfax County, "as a token of his high appreciation of her patriotism, admiration of her virtues, and pledge of his lasting esteem." A devoted Southerner, Laura provided a safe haven for Rebel forces, along with intelligence gathered from passing Union soldiers. Ratcliffe's book contains four poems and forty undated signatures: twenty-six of Confederate officers and soldiers and fourteen of loyal Confederate civilians. In A Southern Spy in Northern Virginia, Charles V. Mauro uncovers the mystery behind this album, identifying who the soldiers were and when they could have signed its pages. The result is a fascinating look at the covert lives and relationships of civilians and soldiers during the war, kept hidden until now. Publisher: The History Press. Paperback, 224 Pages. Measures 8.8"x6.25"x0.65" . Weighs 1 lb 0.8 oz.

John Brown was fiercely committed to the militant abolitionist cause, a crusade that culminated in Brown's raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and his subsequent execution. Less well known is his devotion to his family, and they to him. Two of Brown's sons were killed at Harpers Ferry, but the commitment of his wife and daughters often goes unacknowledged. In The Tie That Bound Us, Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz reveals for the first time the depth of the Brown women's involvement in his cause and their crucial roles in preserving and transforming his legacy after his death. As detailed by Laughlin-Schultz, Brown's second wife Mary Ann Day Brown and his daughters Ruth Brown Thompson, Annie Brown Adams, Sarah Brown, and Ellen Brown Fablinger were in many ways the most ordinary of women, contending with chronic poverty and lives that were quite typical for poor, rural nineteenth-century women. However, they also lived extraordinary lives, crossing paths with such figures as Frederick Douglass and Lydia Maria Child and embracing an abolitionist moral code that sanctioned antislavery violence in place of the more typical female world of petitioning and pamphleteering. In the aftermath of John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, the women of his family experienced a particular kind of celebrity among abolitionists and the American public. In their roles as what daughter Annie called relics of Brown's raid, they tested the limits of American memory of the Civil War, especially the war's most radical aim: securing racial equality. Because of their longevity (Annie, the last of Brown's daughters, died in 1926) and their position as symbols of the most radical form of abolitionist agitation, the story of the Brown women illuminates the changing nature of how Americans remembered Brown's raid, radical antislavery, and the causes and consequences of the Civil War. Publisher: Cornell University Press. Paperback, 280 Pages. Measures 9"x6"x0.6" . Weighs 14.7 oz.

Annie P. Marmion celebrated her ninth birthday just a month before the outbreak of the Civil War. The daughter of the town doctor in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), she kept a journal of her experiences during the war. Her words give a unique perspective of the hardships civilians endured in a town that changed hands at least eight times before the war’s end. A nephew, William Vincent Marmion, Jr., compiled and edited her writings and published them in 1959 in the booklet Under Fire: An Experience in the Civil War. This reprint by the Harpers Ferry Park Association includes annotations and vivid watercolor paintings commissioned by the National Park Services that enhance the narrative of a child living with war on her doorstep.  Publisher: Harpers Ferry Park Association. Paperback, 29 pages. Measures 6" x 9" x 0.125". Weighs 3 oz.