Susie King Taylor #1345
$ 10.00
“ There are many people who
do not know what some of
the colored women did
during the war.
There were hundreds
of them who assisted the
Union soldiers by hiding
them and helping
them to escape.”
During the Civil War, black American
nurse Susie King Taylor aided the
Union Army. She later helped
freedmen and Civil War veterans.
Susie King Taylor born on the Grest Farm in Liberty County, Georgia, Susie Baker King Taylor was raised as an enslaved person. Her mother was a domestic servant for the Grest family. At the age of 7, Susie and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Savannah. Even with the strict laws against formal education of African Americans, they both attended two secret schools taught by African American women. Susie soon became a skilled reader and writer. By 1860 and having been taught everything these two African American educators could offer, Susiebefriended two white individuals (a girl and boy) who also offered to teach her lessons, even though they knew it violated Georgia law and custom. On April 1, 1862 at age 14, Susie was sent back to the country to live with her mother around the time federal forces attacked nearby Fort Pulaski. When the fort was captured by the Union Army, Susie fled with her uncle’s family and other African Americans to Union occupied St. Simons Island. Since most African Americans did not have an extensive education, word of Susie’s knowledge and intelligence spread among the Army officers on the island. Five days after her arrival, Susie was offered books and school supplies by Commodore Louis M. Goldsborough if she agreed to organize a school for the children on St. Simons Island. Susie accepted the offer and became the first African American teacher to openly instruct African American students in Georgia. By day, she taught children and at night she instructed adults. Susie met and married her first husband, Edward King, an African American officer in the Union Army, while teaching at St. Simon Island. For the next three years, Susie traveled with her husband’s regiment, working as a laundress while teaching African American Union soldiers how to read and write during their off-duty hours. She also served as a nurse, helping camp doctors care for injured soldiers. In 1866, the Kings returned to Savannah, where she established a school for freed African American children. In that same year, Edward King died in September only a few months after their first son was born. By the early 1870s, she moved to Boston, where she met her second husband, Russell Taylor. With nursing being a passion of hers, Susie soon joined and then became president of the Women’s Relief Corps, which gave assistance to
soldiers and hospitals.
