Sarah’s life on the home front during the Civil War
In 1860 Sarah and her husband, Andrew Jackson (Jack) Healan, had a house full of people. According to the Georgia census (Lafayette, Walker Co.) of 1860, Sarah and Jack had three children under six years of age, two of Sarah’s teenage sisters and Jack’s 80 year-old mother.
Jack became a 1st lieutenant on June 12, 1861 in the Lafayette Volunteers, and the company left for Atlanta on June 19.
Imagine the 28-year-old Sarah coping with her large household. At first there were probably not too many inconveniences. But as the war continued and the Union blockade was successful, nobody could get items like salt, coffee or salt.
The following is Corrie Healan Justice’s account of that time, gleaned from stories that her mother, Sarah, had told her.
“Food supplies were very scarce, and clothing was greatly needed for the armies. Then it was that the women of the South whose sphere, prior to this, had never widened beyond the domestic field, rose equal to the occasion. They proved that they were able to establish new processes and could provide substitutes for a great number of things.
“All the women and girls learned to card and spin. Stockings were carefully unraveled after the feet were worn out, the thread then twisted on the spinning wheel and knitted into new stockings, gloves or mitts. All women’s wearing apparel was treated the same way.
“The homespun dress of the Southern girls became famous, giving expression to the popular war verses, sung to the tune of the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag.’
“Substitutes were provided for coffee, tea and sugar, but for salt they boiled sea water where it was possible to get it. Others raked the floors of smoke houses; they removed the floors, dug up the dirt underneath, washed it all thoroughly and procured a limited supply.”
©Healan Barrow
These excerpts were taken from an essay called, “The Part the Women of the South Played in the War Between the States.” At the end of the typewritten article, Corrie Healan Justice (b. 1870, d. 1958) wrote “I received a prize for this article from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Guilford Chapter, Greensboro, N.C., and it has never been printed.” There were no dates on the essay.