Eliza Frances Andrews

Eliza Frances Andrews
Photograph of Andrews, 1865
Born	August 10, 1840(1840-08-10) Washington, Georgia, USA
Died	January 21, 1931(1931-01-21) (aged 90) Rome, Georgia, USA
Notable work(s)	A Family Secret Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl: 1864-65

Eliza Frances Andrews (August 10, 1840 – January 21, 1931) was a popular Southern writer of the Gilded Age. Her works were published in popular magazines and papers, including the New York World and Godey's Lady's Book.

Eliza Frances Andrews gained fame in three fields: authorship, education, and science. Her passion was writing and she had success both as an essayist and a novelist. Financial troubles forced her to take a teaching career after the deaths of her parents, though she continued to be published. In her retirement she combined two of her interests by writing two textbooks on botany entitled Botany All the Year Round and Practical Botany, one of which became popular in Europe and was used in schools in France. The books and articles that Andrews published give a glimpse into a life of bitterness, dissatisfaction, and confusion.

Biography

Eliza Frances "Fanny" Andrews was born on August 10, 1840, in Washington, Georgia, the second daughter of Annulet Ball and Garnett Andrews, a Georgia superior court judge. Her father was a lawyer, judge, and plantation owner, possessing around two hundred slaves. In her adolescence Andrews attended Ladies' Seminary school near her home, and went on to graduate among the first class of students from LaGrange Female College in Georgia in 1857. She was well-versed in literature, music, and the arts, and was conversant in both French and Latin. "Fanny" was still living at home in the care of her family when the Southern states began to secede from the Union. Her father was notoriously outspoken against secession and did not support the Confederacy. Despite his views, three of his sons enlisted in the Confederate States Army and his daughters, too, believed in the rebellion. Thus, while Garnett Andrews refused to allow secessionist ideals to be voiced in his home, his daughters secretly made the first Confederate flag to fly over the courthouse in her hometown. Conflicting opinions between her and her father agitated and confused the young Andrews. Her father, who in the words of one biographer "helped his children to learn to love books and learning", had begun suppressing her beliefs.

Late in the war Andrews and her sister were sent to live with a relative in the southwest of Georgia and Andrews recorded both her journey and stay in a journal that was later published under the title Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl: 1864-65. Though not published until 1908, the diary effectively began her career as a writer. Later in 1865 at her father’s suggestion, Andrews submitted her first piece for publication in the New York World. It described the mistreatment of southerners by the reconstruction administrators that were now in control of the South. She penned many articles for a variety of publications on topics such as women's fashion during the war, and a piece on Catherine Littlefield Greene, the woman who was behind the success of Eli Whitney's cotton gin.

In 1873 her father died and bad investments forced the family to sell the plantation. This sudden financial reversal required Andrews to work. She briefly edited the Washington Gazette but when the editor discovered she was a woman, she was suddenly "not fit for the job". She then became principal at the Girl's High School in Yazoo, Mississippi, where she remained for 7 years. She resigned the position in the early 1880's in order to recuperate from a serious illness. Andrews then returned to Washington to become the principal at her former seminary school. She received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgiain 1882. In 1885 she moved to Macon, working as a professor of French and literature there from 1886 to 1896, before returning once again to Washington and devoting herself full-time to lecturing and writing. After retirement she continued to write and began to focus on botany. She published two textbooks, one of which was translated and adopted by French schools. Near the end of her life the International Academy of Science recognized her for her writing on botany.

The degree of advancement Eliza Frances Andrews achieved in her career as a writer, textbook author, and teacher would have been unthinkable had it not been for the collapse of her beloved antebellum estate in Washington, Georgia. The question then becomes whether she was motivated to advance her career and assert her independence out of want or need. A good illustration of her often contradictory nature is her desire to remain single for the rest of her life. This is apparent in her first novel A Family Secret (1876) which creates a vivid image of the role of women in the post war south. She remarks upon the misery inherent in marrying for money and writes at one point "Oh, the slavery it is to be a woman and not a fool." At the same time, Andrews felt that the domestic mother was the only acceptable role for women in Southern society, and she considered teaching "a mental tread-mill, a dull road traveled over and over requiring only patience." On the surface her writing seems to come into direct conflict with her accomplishments as a teacher and scholar, but over time she learned to accept that she could not rescue her beloved antebellum society and began to assume a new role in an era where society was experiencing rapid economic and social changes.

All of the dissatisfaction in life made her dream of a more ideal society and from 1899 to 1918 she proclaimed herself a socialist and wrote an article for the International Socialist Review concerning socialism in the botanical world. Even with her new political views, she was still a racist and wrote about the superiority of the white race over the black and boasting that with the help of the Ku Klux Klan the color line had been preserved in her home town. Despite her bitterness with the inequality of the role of women in society, she did not support women's suffrage.

Andrews died in Rome, Georgia on January 21, 1931, at the age of ninety, donating her royalties to the city of Rome to be used for the creation of a public woodland space. She is buried in the family plot in Resthaven Cemetery, in Washington, Georgia.

Gallery

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  Eliza's father Judge 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, where Eliza was born

References

• Cita Cook, "Eliza Frances Andrews", American National Biography
• Mainiero, Lina. American Women Writers, Vol. 1. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1979.
• Ohles, John F. Biographical Dictionary of American Educators, Vol. 1. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978.

External links

• The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1908.
• Works by or about Eliza Frances Andrews in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Biographical article on Andrews