Civil War's effect on Mary Elizabeth Fields Smith Foster
THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of Union
County, Georgia
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Civil War's
effect on Mary Elizabeth Fields Smith Foster
In looking back
on the Civil War, we often focus on the men who went away to war and
its effect on them. But the women and children who were left to fend
for themselves fought a brave fight as well, enduring hardships that
would have torn apart less hardy and determined souls.
Little Mary
Elizabeth Fields had a rather auspicious entrance into this world. She
was born February
6, 1837. The exact place of her birth
was not recorded in family records, for her parents, Jesse B. and
Catherine Akins Fields were on their way from their old home in
Pickens, S.C., to Union County, Ga., when their second child and first
baby girl was born. Whether Catherine Fields thought they would be
settled in Union County
before the new baby arrived, or whether she went into premature labor
is not known. However, even in the cold February weather and the trip
over rough terrain through the mountainous region, the bundled-up new
baby and mother arrived tired and safe at the land on which the Fields
family settled and inhabited a log cabin in what later was known as the
Edward Crump "gingerbread" house on Owltown.
Mary Elizabeth,
better known as Bettie, did not receive much formal education, but
learned to read and write at home, skills that served her well in later
years. She married at age 17 to George Smith on June 14, 1855. To
them were born four children, three sons and a daughter. However, as
was common in those days, one son and the daughter did not survive
infancy. Sons Louis W. Smith (b. 1858) and Joseph W. Smith (b. 1860)
survived and grew to manhood.
Talk of the
country splitting into North and South was prevalent, even as people
gathered for church or at mills, stores or post offices in Union County.
George Smith, who was born in the south and loved the south, held
unionist views because he did not want to see the Union
asunder. He decided to move his young family to Tennessee to
look for a better living than he could make on the farm in Union County.
With the family living in a log cabin with some land to provide patches
and a garden, George Smith joined the Union Army and went away to
fight.
Of great
concern to Bettie Fields Smith as she cared for her two little boys and
tried to make a crop were the knowledge that her brothers, John and
Thomas Fields, who had joined the Confederate Army, might come face to
face with Union
soldier George Smith, her husband. Having sworn allegiance to opposing
forces, their fighting each other was a grave possibility. It is not
known whether they ever faced on the same battlefields.
On the home
front, raiders and looters were a constant threat. Bettie stored what
food she could raise for her family in hiding places to keep it from
being stolen. Miraculously, with the help of some caring neighbors, she
and the two young boys endured the hardships of war. Her husband did
not return. Finally she received word that George Smith had been
killed.
After a year of
mourning for her husband, she met 24 year old Charles Edmund Foster.
He, like her first husband, had fought for the Union cause and had been
an officer in the U.S. Army. They courted for awhile and were married
in Tennessee.
Charles Foster had a good education for a mountain man of his day. He
taught in country schools and farmed the land Bettie owned around her
log cabin. Their first child, Ulysses S. Foster, was born February 28, 1867. No
doubt, Bettie thought of her own birthday, so close to her fifth
child's. She had been born 30 years before on February 6, 1837 as
her parents moved from South
Carolina to Georgia.
Soon after the
birth of their first child, Bettie and Charles Foster moved from Tennessee to Union County.
Their second child, William Robert Foster, was born October 11, 1869.
Other children born to them were Edmund Lee Foster (October 26, 1873),
Eva Eldorado Foster (1877) and Fleta Jane Foster (1880).
Betty Fields
Smith Foster had learned fortitude during the war years. She did not
ease up on her duties as a wife and mother back in Union County. She
had not received much education, but she was determined that her
children go to school. She made their clothing, weaving the cloth and
sewing garments. She worked hard to make what money she could from eggs
and chickens in barter at the local merchandise store. Her husband
Charles Edmund Foster was "known in the land" as a dependable farmer
and teacher. In the 1870s he was elected as Union County's
Clerk of Superior Court, an office he filled with distinction
periodically until his death in 1887. For a time in 1884, Foster and
his eldest son, Ulysses, went west to Texas for
six months to seek employment there. Bettie Foster was glad to see them
return home and be content to remain in the mountains.
In 1887 Charles
Foster became ill while serving as Clerk of Court. As the saying was
then, "he took to his bed," and was never well again. His death came October 16, 1887.
Although Bettie's older children were married and gone from home when
Charles died, she was still left with these children at home: William
Robert, 18, Edmund Lee, 14, Eva Eldorado,
10, and Fleta Jane, 7. At age 50, Bettie
Foster buckled down and did what she had to do to keep house, farm and
children together. Her son, Edmund Lee Foster, wrote a biography of his
mother in 1923 in which he paid tribute to her as one who lived by the
philosophy of "Where there is a will, there is a way." He lauded her
strong Christian faith, her sterling character and her unwavering
determination.
Her last years
were somewhat easier financially when, in 1890, she was granted a
widow's pension from the U.S. Army service of her late husband, Charles
Edmond Foster.
With the
stipend, she was able to buy a place on the Nottely River
about 2 and 1/2 miles south of Blairsville where she lived out her life
until age 72, dying May 6, 1908.
In the Harmony Grove Baptist Church Cemetery are
the graves of Charles Edmund Foster (1842-1887) and Mary Elizabeth
(Bettie) Fields Smith Foster (1837-1908). Close by are the graves of
her parents, Catherine Akins Fields (?-1857) and Jesse B. Fields
(1812-1904). The Fields were founding members of the church and that is
probably where Bettie Foster liked to sing the beautiful songs of Zion
and attend church faithfully, bringing up her children in the "nurture
and admonition of the Lord."
c2006 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Aug. 3, 2006 in The
Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights
reserved.
[Ethelene
Dyer Jones is a retired educator, freelance writer, poet, and historian.
She may be reached at e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708
Cedarwood Road,
Milledgeville,
GA
31061-2411.]
Updated January 10, 2008
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