Chesnut, Mary Boykin ___ 1823-1886 ___ American ___ n/a

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Mary was born in Stateboro, South Carolina; her father, who died when she was 15, had been a senator and governor of South Carolina. She was educated at home and at a French boarding school in Charleston. In 1840, she married James Chesnut Jr. They lived in Camden and at Mulberry, the Chesnut family plantation, and then when James was elected to the Senate, they moved to Washington. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, they returned to South Carolina so that James could participate in the drafting of an ordinance of secession. Subsequently, he served in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America; he also worked as an aide to General Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis, and achieved the rank of general. During the Civil War, Mary accompanied her husband, and wherever they went their home served as a meeting place for the Confederate elite. From 1861 to 1865 Mary recorded her experiences in a series of diaries. Following the war, the couple returned to Camden and worked to extricate themselves from heavy debts. Mary tried writing fiction, but found more success in writing about the Civil War, with the use of her diaries. 'Mary Chesnut's Civil War' is considered one of the best Confederacy literary works.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Chesnut's civil war diary

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1861-1865 ___ political military society domestic

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext
a few pages
etext

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
South Caroliniana Library

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
A Diary from Dixie
Mary Chesnut's Civil War
The Private Mary Chesnut
 

May 2005, June 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.