Sunday Feb. 1st
Cloudy & warm, snow all gone. Preaching at the Academy today but few went from here. Mr. Reynolds preaches the 1st Sunday in every month. Mr. Henry & Boyd are sitting here reading my paper. The children playing hide & Seek in the yard. Willie is sitting in Mr. Henry’s lap. It is dinner time, 2 o’clock. We had very late breakfast this morning. Tom Morris is at home. He came after Pinck Allen who has deserted again. I read all the evening my papers & read some in Ernest Linwood. I have read it before but it is a book that will bear reading again & again.
Note: Caroline Lee Hentz of Massachusetts was the author of Ernest Linwood (1856) and was known as a pro-slavery authoress and often compared to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Biographical sketch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Lee_Hentz and link to Ernest Linwood eBook: http://archive.org/details/ernestlinwoodan00hentgoog
Source: Diary of Cornelia Henry in Fear in North Carolina: The Civil War Journal and Letters of the Henry Family. Clinard, Karen L. and Russell, Richard, eds. (Asheville, NC: Reminiscing Books, 2008).
Mrs. Hentz’s husband was a professor at UNC. She wrote The Planter’s Northern Bride. I understand she also helped George Moses Horton, the black poet at UNC with his poetry which was published. [p. 844 Blood and War at my Doorstep: North Carolina Civilians in the War between the States by brenda McKean]
Thanks Brenda! A post on another of our DCR blogs today (just added to the Note in the blog post) references her and her assistance to Horton!