To Raise Myself A Little: The Diaries and Letters of Jennie, A Georgia Teacher

by Amelia Akehurst Lines, Thomas G. Dyer (Editor)

Overview

Amelia Akehurst Lines’s diaries and letters provide an extraordinarily rich record of the attitudes and values of an “average” American woman of the mid-nineteenth century. Lines was a young New York schoolteacher whose ambition drove her to seek new opportunities in rural Georgia. Her letters and diary entries provide keen observations on Georgia society and yield a great deal of information concerning the family, child-rearing, and other facets of everyday life in both the North and the South. Lines’s life, says historian Thomas Dyer in his introduction, is testimony to the mythical quality of the nineteenth century’s conventional wisdom that hard work, piety, and personal commitment were all that was needed to reap the promise of American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820339368
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	03/15/2012
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

THOMAS G. DYER (1943-2013) was University Professor Emeritus and Vice President for Instruction Emeritus at the University of Georgia. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta and The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785–1985 (Georgia).

THOMAS G. DYER (1943-2013) was University Professor Emeritus and Vice President for Instruction Emeritus at the University of Georgia. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta and The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785–1985 (Georgia).

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Methodological Note xi

Chronology xiii

Map xv

Principals xvii

Introduction 1

I Teacher in New York, 1851-1856: 13

II Teacher in Georgia, 1857-1858 37

III Teaching, Courting, & Marrying, 1859-1860 123

IV Wartime, 1861-1865 173

V Readjustment, 1865-1871 213

VI Denouement, 1871-1886 255

Notes 273

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

The publication of To Raise Myself a Little rescues from obscurity materials that shed light on a particularly interesting nook in American history. Together these writings provide a complex portrait of the work life, marital history, health problems, religious views, and social attitudes of an aspiring middle-class American woman of the mid-nineteenth century.

American Journal of Education

“The publication of To Raise Myself a Little rescues from obscurity materials that shed light on a particularly interesting nook in American history. Together these writings provide a complex portrait of the work life, marital history, health problems, religious views, and social attitudes of an aspiring middle-class American woman of the mid-nineteenth century.”—American Journal of Education

From the Publisher