Eliza Frances Andrews

Eliza Frances Andrews, 1865

Eliza Frances Andrews , pseudonym Elizey Hay (born August 10, 1840 in Washington , Georgia , † January 21, 1931 in Rome , Georgia) was an American writer , educator and botanist .

life and work

Andrews was born the second daughter of Annulet Ball Andrews and Georgia Supreme Court Justice Garnett Andrews. Her father was a lawyer and plantation owner and owned around two hundred slaves. She grew up on the family estate Haywood, whose name she later used in her pseudonym "Elzey Hay". She attended the local Ladies Seminary School and graduated from LaGrange Female College (later LaGrange College ) in 1857 , where she was among the earliest female students. She spoke both French and Latin , lived at home after college and wrote intermittently for various newspapers. In 1864 she started her diary, which was finally published in 1908 with the title: The War-Time Journal of a Georgian Girl. Historians consider it an important book for gaining insight into the experiences and feelings of many southern women during the Civil War and early reconstruction. In the course of her life she has produced novels, poems and botany texts as well as series, articles, essays and editorials for more than 70 magazines and newspapers. Her first article, A Romance of Robbery, appeared in an 1865 issue of New York World . It described the mistreatment of southerners by the administrators, who now had control of the south. In 1873 her father died, the family had to sell the plantation and she started working for the Washington Gazette. When the editor discovered she was a woman, she was fired. In 1872 she taught at Washington Seminary in her hometown and in 1872 she moved to Yazoo, Mississippi, where she taught and later became headmaster. The diary she kept during these years was only discovered and published decades later. In 1874 she returned to Washington and opened the Select School for Girls with a cousin. In 1876 her first novel was published: A Family Secret. In it she told the story of a woman struggling to maintain her independence, a subject that reappeared in two later novels. It was an issue that was close to her heart as she never wanted to get married and lose her freedom. She taught at the Select School until 1881, where she was later headmaster. During those years she also joined the Georgia Teachers Association and served as a vice president and chairman of various committees. Her second novel was published in 1879: A Mere Adventurer. A third and final novel followed three years later: Prince Hal, or, The Romance of a Rich Young Man. In 1885 she took a position at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia , where she taught literature and French and also worked in the library. Three years earlier, the college had awarded her an AM Honorary Second Degree. Towards the end of ten years at Wesleyan College, she began a lecturing group and wrote frequently for magazines. She returned to Washington around 1900 and began teaching science in a high school. She devoted herself seriously to botany and spent a summer doing research at Johns Hopkins University . Her first textbook appeared in 1903: Botany All the Year Around. It was a book that was especially useful in rural schools, where labs or supplies were rare. In 1911 their second and more advanced textbook was published. The text was the result of six years of study in Alabama and was aimed at school and university students with the title: A Practical Course in Botany. After spending some time at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University ) to edit the text and collaborate with other botanists, she donated more than 3,000 plant specimens, which she had collected with botanist Alvan Wentworth Chapman , to the Alabama Department of Agriculture. The royalties from her textbooks provided her with a comfortable income in later years. In 1926 she was invited to become a member of the International Academy of Literature and Science, the only American woman to be so honored at the time. She died in Rome, Georgia and is buried in Resthaven Cemetery in her hometown of Washington.

Picture gallery

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  Eliza's father Garnett Andrews 1827

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  Eliza's mother Annulet Andrews, 1827

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  Eliza's younger sister, Metta Andrews, 1872

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  Haywood Plantation

Publications (selection)

• "Botany as a Recreation for Invalids" in Popular Science Monthly, April 28, 1886.
• "Education and the Employment of Children" in Popular Science Monthly, 33 June 1888.
• "Will the Coming Woman Lose Her Hair?" in Popular Science Monthly, January 42, 1893.
• Botany all the year round; a practical text-book for schools, New York, Cincinnati: American book company, 1903.
• The war-time journal of a Georgia girl, 1864-1865, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1908.
• A family secret, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005.
• Journal of a Georgia Woman, 1870–1872, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002.

literature

• Eliza Frances Andrews, in A Woman of the Century (pp. 26-27), (ed.) By Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Buffalo: Charles Wells Moulton, 1893.
• Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf: American women writers from colonial times to the present (4 volume set), St James Press, 2000.
• Coleman, Kenneth; Gurr, Charles Stephen: "Andrews, Eliza Frances". Dictionary of Georgia Biography. Athens: University of Georgia Press. p. 29, 1983.
• Ohles, John F .: Biographical Dictionary of American Educators, Vol. 1. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978.
• Ford, Charlotte A .: "Eliza Frances Andrews, Practical Botanist, 1840-1931". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 70 (1), 1986.
• Christopher J. Olsen: "Eliza Frances Andrews: 'I Will Have to Say" Damn! "Yet, Before I Am Done with Them,'" in Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 1., ed. Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

Web links

Commons : Eliza Frances Andrews  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Eliza Frances "Fanny" Andrews, botanist. Educator. Writer
• Biography at Womenhistoryblog
• biography