Hello,
April 21st, 2010 – Our 73rd Meeting!
The next meeting of the Clarksville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Wednesday, April 21st, in the café of Borders Books in Governor’s Square Mall. This is located on Wilma Rudolph Blvd (Hwy 79) south of Exit 4 off I-24, then head south a bit. The mall is on the left. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. Members please bring a friend or two – new recruits are always welcomed.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC:
“NANNIE HASKINS’ CIVIL WAR – The Diary Of A Clarksville Woman Under Occupation”
In the 1990s, Ken Burns introduced Nannie Haskins to the American public through his PBS series, The Civil War. Nannie was a Clarksville teenager when Union soldiers occupied the city after the fall of Ft. Donelson in mid-February, 1862. Two of her brothers fought for the Confederacy and she was passionate in her hatred of the Yankees. As a talented writer she chronicled her experiences and observations in an artfully written diary. Civil War historians have used the unpublished diaries in their studies because of her wonderful prose which provide excellent quotes. Most recently, Drew Gilpin Faust quoted Nannie in her recent study of Civil War death and grieving. Nannie’s diary talks about the difficulty of obtaining reliable news, Union pickets and colored soldiers, the difficulty in getting passes and restrictions on religious practices. She also wrote about the violence and guerrilla warfare that exploded in the Clarksville area but did not ignore the social life that developed during this time of crisis. She describes the pain of losing a brother who died in a northern POW camp after being captured at Ft. Donelson. Another brother was captured after Gettysburg. Both events reinforced her well-known hatred of Yankees.
Her Civil War years remembrances are historically significant but they only chronicle a short period of her sporadic journaling. When her descendents donated her diary to the Tennessee State Library they did not see the value of the entries after the war and excluded them. In fact, Nannie’s story did not end with the Civil War and she wrote periodically in 1869, 1871, 1880-1883, 1885-1890. These entries belie the southern belle image. She chronicles her life as she matures, marries, settles across the state line in Kentucky and struggles with the challenges of rearing four step children and six of her own. In 1870, twenty-two year old Nannie married widower Henry Williams, a farmer. By choosing a farmer she secured a fate of financial uncertainty and faced rearing her family on the whims of the fickle tobacco market. Yet, throughout the sixteen years she kept the diary she expressed no regret at her choice and recorded instances of loving attention Henry paid her such as gathering bouquets of wild flowers. Nannie Haskins Williams died in 1930.
Nannie’s diary, in its entirety, describes her life not only in the Civil War context, but also marriage, economic struggles of farm life in the Reconstruction and post Reconstruction South. The Williams farm grew dark-fired tobacco unique to Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee. The diary contains entries recording her worry over debt and mortgage payments. One concern was that her children, including her daughters, obtain good educations in the changing South.
The wonderful story of Nannie Haskins will be presented this month by Dr. Minoa Uffelman, associate professor of history at Austin Peay State University. She will be ably assisted by Phyllis Smith and Ellen Kanervo who are part of the team that are transcribing Nannie’s diary. It is hoped that the completed project will be published by the University of Tennessee Press. With the growing interest in the civilian and especially female side of the war and Reconstruction, this would be a most valuable contribution. Anyone familiar with the Ken Burns series will know of Nannie’s whit as well as her poignant pen.
We very much look forward to hearing about the talented young lady who, through her words and modern media, has helped to put Clarksville on the Civil War map.