Eliza Frances Andrews

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Eliza Frances Andrews (August 10, 1840 – January 21, 1931) was a popular Southern writer of the Gilded Age. She published in, among other places, the New York World and Godey's Lady's Book.

Eliza Frances Andrews gained notoriety in three fields: author, then educator, then scientist. Her passion was writing and she had success as both 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 interest by writing two textbooks on 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.

“Fanny” Andrews was born on August 10, 1840 at Haywood plantation to Garnett and Annulet Ball Andrews. 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 in Washington and went on to graduate among the first class of students from LaGrange Female College in Georgia. “Fanny” was still living at home in the care of her family when 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 began 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 to a piece and 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 independence required Andrews to work. She briefly edited the Washington Gazette but was fired on account of her gender. She then became principal at the Girl’s High School in Yazoo, Mississippi. She resigned the position in 1874 reportedly because she was unhappy being a principal under a black superintendent. Andrews then returned to Washington to become the principal at her former seminary school and later became a professor of French and literature at the Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia from 1886 to 1896. 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.

In spite of her successful career in education, Andrews had grown very bitter having been on the losing side of the war, been fired due to her sex, losing her parents, and working under a black man when she was once heir to some two hundred slaves. Due to all of this consternation she vowed to remain single for the rest of her life. This is apparent in her first novel A Family Secret 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.”

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 view, 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 has been preserved in her home town. And despite her bitterness with the inequality of women’s role in society, she did not support women’s suffrage.

[edit] 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.